DEATH OF A MEMBER

Mr. Speaker: I regret to have to report to the House the death of Rachel Squire, Member for Dunfermline and West Fife. I am sure that Members on all sides of the House will join me in mourning the loss of a colleague and extending our sympathy to the hon. Member's family and friends.

Oral Answers to Questions

WORK AND PENSIONS

The Secretary of State was asked—

Inactive Benefits

Stephen McCabe: How many recipients of inactive benefits moved back to work in the last year for which figures are available.

John Hutton: In the year to May 2005, the number of people receiving inactive benefits has fallen by 76,000. The number of incapacity benefits recipients has fallen by 41,000 and the number of lone parents receiving benefits by 34,000.

Stephen McCabe: I am sure that my right hon. Friend agrees that the best route out of poverty is a decently paid job for those who can work. In that context, will he share with us his latest thinking on what will happen to those on incapacity benefit who can work, as well as on safeguards for those who will not be able to work?

John Hutton: My hon. Friend is right and I am sure that he speaks for the majority of Members when he says that, ultimately, that is the best type of welfare-to-work reform on which we can agree. I suspect that there will be a disagreement between us on the means to that end, but we remain convinced, building on the experience of the new deals—actively opposed by Opposition Members—that if we work with benefit recipients, develop their skills, capacities and capabilities and provide them with the appropriate level of support, that will be the best way of getting people out of benefits and into well-paid jobs. The proof of the pudding comes from the pathways to work pilot schemes that we have been testing up and down the country since 2003, which have produced positive results.

Tony Baldry: In an area such as mine, most jobs require high skills. Those who have been out of work due to incapacity often require new skills, but the learning and skills councils and colleges of further education now seem to be focusing more and more on the 16 to 19 age group and less and less on providing skills and qualification training for adults. I do not believe that the learning and skills councils have got a grip on this. If people are to get the skills they need to get back into work, they will need some encouragement to acquire them, and the routing is not there.

John Hutton: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I agree that, wherever possible, we should make sure that there is proper co-ordination between Government Departments that share a broadly similar agenda. Tackling worklessness is a shared responsibility between myself and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. When we publish our proposals in the welfare reform Green Paper, we will set out how we promote better co-ordination between various Government agencies to produce the results that the hon. Gentleman and I would welcome.

Helen Goodman: I do not know whether my right hon. Friend is aware that, contrary to common understanding, the majority of people in the north-east on incapacity benefits are women. Also, a large number of people on incapacity benefit have mental health problems. How will he address their needs and help them get back into work?

John Hutton: My hon. Friend is quite right to talk about some of the characteristics of incapacity benefit claimants. We shall soon be setting out a series of detailed proposals for reforming incapacity benefit and these will draw on our experiences to date from the pathways to work projects and take forward what we have learned from the new deals. I am sure that if we can provide the right help and support for people on incapacity benefit, we can make a significant contribution to tackling some of the levels of deprivation that can be seen in her constituency, in mine and in many others.

Danny Alexander: In terms of the proposals in the welfare reform Green Paper to be published later this month, the Secretary of State has talked about the experience from the pathways to work areas. Will he assure the House that when the Green Paper is published, there will be sufficient funding behind the roll-out of the pathways to work schemes across the country to ensure that incapacity benefit recipients all over the UK can benefit from the scheme?

John Hutton: Yes. We have £150 million of funding to facilitate the extension across the country of the pathways to work schemes, which have proved to be successful. The proposals that we shall bring forward in the Green Paper will of course be fully funded.

Frank Field: Are not the Secretary of State's constituency and mine similar to practically all constituencies represented in this House, in that for every one unemployed claimant, there are three incapacity benefit claimants? Most Jobcentre Pluses still spend most of their time helping the unemployed back into work. When he publishes the Green Paper, will he assure the House that all Jobcentre Pluses will give a disproportionate amount of time to those who form the largest part of the dole queues?

John Hutton: My right hon. Friend is right to describe as he does the scale and depth of the problem that we need to tackle. As part of the reforms, which will be set out later this month, it will be very important that Jobcentre Plus supports the voluntary sector and some commercial and private sector providers, in order to provide a stronger and better menu of support for those of his constituents—and mine—who are claiming incapacity benefit. When he sees the Green Paper, I hope that he will give it his very strong support.

Julian Brazier: I welcome the last part of the Secretary of State's answer, but does he accept that voluntary organisations such as the Shaw Trust have a much greater success rate than the statutory sector? Can he say now what steps he will take to ensure that jobcentres do not keep in-house work that could be farmed out to such very successful organisations?

John Hutton: I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the Shaw Trust, which is doing excellent work for us in a number of very important areas. Again, he will have to wait for the publication of the Green Paper, but a very important part of the reforms that we want to introduce is that we learn to draw on the expertise and skills of a wider variety of organisations that can help us to get people off benefit and back into work. The voluntary sector will have a very important role to play in helping us to do that.

Diane Abbott: On benefits and welfare to work, does my right hon. Friend agree that one thing that would have given my friend the former Member for West Ham the most satisfaction—he worked very hard for the people of the east end for more than 20 years—was the work that his Labour Government did in taking so many people in the east end out of poverty?

John Hutton: I agree very strongly with my hon. Friend and I am sure that I speak for every person in this House today when I say that we mourn the death of Tony Banks, who was an outstanding Member of Parliament. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] We will miss him very much.

Philip Hammond: First, I should like to associate myself and my colleagues with the Secretary of State's last remarks. We welcome his commitment to publishing the Green Paper on incapacity benefit reform before the end of this month, and provided that he stands firm in tackling the problems in the current system and does not allow himself to be deflected by potential rebels, we look forward to engaging in a constructive discussion with him on it. But why does he think that so many of his Labour colleagues appear to need so much convincing of the merits of a set of proposals designed to help people out of benefit dependency and into work?

John Hutton: I first welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new responsibilities; it is a bit like old times for him and me. We spent many years—it felt like many years—debating care standards legislation in Standing Committee, so today brings back happy memories for me. [Hon. Members: "Give details."] I could—believe me, I could; it is tattooed on my brain. It is not at all a case of having to convince my right hon. and hon. Friends on this issue. We see in our constituencies the failures of the current system, which, to give the hon. Gentleman credit, he fairly said last week has led to a culture of benefit dependency. Of course, it is a system that his Government set up, and it has spectacularly failed millions of people throughout the country. I am sure that I will have support on the Labour Benches for my proposals, and I point out to the hon. Gentleman— as he probably expects me to—that I do not believe that he or his colleagues have anything to contribute to this debate, given their history in 18 years in government.

Philip Hammond: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his words of welcome and it is indeed like old times, but we will take no lectures from him. His Government have been in office for nearly eight years and have done, in the words of his own Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform, sweet nothing to tackle this problem in that time. Given that the total number of incapacity benefit claimants is higher than in 1997, does he agree that the forthcoming Green Paper must address not only the flow of new claimants but the stock of existing ones, many of whom want to work and could do so if they were supported? Would it not be a betrayal of those currently trapped in dependency by this benefits system if he were to fail to address in the Green Paper the issue of current claimants?

John Hutton: I agree, and that is why the Green Paper will also address the issue of what extra help and support we can provide for existing incapacity benefit claimants. The hon. Gentleman is wrong to say that we have done nothing to address the failures of the system that his party put in place, and the proof that we have done something is clear from the figures. For the first time for 25 years, the number claiming incapacity benefit has begun to fall, precisely because of the extra support and investment that we have made—all of which were opposed by him and his colleagues. He mentions the numbers, and it is true that since 1997 the total number claiming incapacity benefit has risen by 4 per cent., but last year saw the first fall. Between 1979 and 1997, the number claiming incapacity benefit rose by 232 per cent. That figure speaks volumes.

Child Support Agency

Harry Cohen: If he will make a statement on the Child Support Agency's policy towards those deemed to be the parent without care who claim they are not actually the parent.

James Plaskitt: Where the parentage of a child is disputed, the agency can, in appropriate cases, arrange DNA tests. In five out of six cases, these prove that the alleged non-resident parent is the father of the child. There are categories of case, for example where the father is named on the birth certificate, where the agency can presume parentage without a test, but that can be disputed in the courts. If the court finds, or the DNA test shows, that a man is not the father of the child, the agency refunds the cost of the DNA test, refunds any maintenance paid and ceases action.

Harry Cohen: It was recently revealed that more than 3,000 men or one in six of those who took the DNA test were not the father of the child. Will my hon. Friend give an absolute assurance that all those men will be fully refunded, any arrears written off and the cost of the test reimbursed? If it is deemed that a woman acted maliciously in naming a man who proved not to be the father, should not the cost of the DNA test be transferred to her?

James Plaskitt: My hon. Friend is correct to say that since the agency began to operate there have been 3,000 such cases. However, the number of tests commissioned each year is falling. In the first full year of the agency's operation there were more than 4,000 tests, but in the last complete year of operation there were fewer than 2,000. The percentage proving negative has been steady throughout, with just 300 such cases last year. I assure my hon. Friend that if a man is proved not to be the father, the cost of the DNA test is reimbursed as are any maintenance payments made. If a malicious claim is made by a mother, there are actions that the agency may take against her.

Desmond Swayne: Does the Minister consider that there is sufficient incentive for the partner with care to identify the other parent?

James Plaskitt: In most cases in which that becomes a matter of dispute, it is resolved long before maintenance comes into place. Disputes about parentage occur in various circumstances. Sometimes the dispute emerges early, with the claim being made by either party, but sometimes a dispute only arises once a man has been assessed as liable for maintenance. Then, and only then, does he dispute parentage, usually for vexatious reasons. That results in an investigation to establish whether he is in fact the father.

Public Sector Pensions

Robert Wilson: What role his Department has played in negotiations on the reform of public sector pensions.

Stephen Timms: We have welcomed the savings to the Exchequer that will result from the negotiations. In April 2005, the Prime Minister asked the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to lead discussions with trade unions on the public sector schemes. My right hon. Friend took that responsibility with him to the Department of Trade and Industry. Ministers in this Department have not taken part in negotiations since then.

Robert Wilson: I thank the Minister for his answer, but what action will he take to address the £800 billion public sector pension liability, or does he simply expect the private sector to pick up the tab?

Stephen Timms: Let me remind the hon. Gentleman what his party said during the election—[Hon. Members: "Answer the question".] I can understand that he may not like to be reminded—

Mr. Speaker: Order. There is no need to remind the hon. Gentleman; the Minister should just give the answer.

Stephen Timms: The Conservatives told us that they had no plans to alter civil service pensions—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister is out of order and he will resume his seat.

David Ruffley: Rather surprisingly, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the Treasury Committee, on 8 December 2005, that in regard to last October's public sector pension agreement
	"all things will be looked at in the sector by sector negotiations".
	In the interests of clarity, can the Minister confirm that as a result of those negotiations nobody who is at present a teacher, a worker in the national health service or a worker in the civil service will have to retire over the age of 60? Yes or no?

Stephen Timms: That would depend on what happens in the meantime: for example, if somebody is under the agreement that has been reached—there are of course further discussions to be had—and leaves one of the occupations that the hon. Gentleman described and later rejoins the pension scheme, they would re-enter on the basis of the new agreement, so the answer to his question is no.

John Robertson: The Minister will be aware of the many attacks on pensions by companies throughout the country which are breaking their promises on almost a daily basis. Will he assure me that the promises we make to public sector workers will be kept and that he will ensure that they are kept?

Stephen Timms: I very much agree with my hon. Friend that it is important that the public sector should behave responsibly as an employer, as all employers should, and that major changes to pension schemes should be negotiated and properly consulted on. That will continue to be our practice.

Vincent Cable: Does the Minister have any plans to revisit—[Hon. Members: "Brutus!"] Does the Minister have any plans to revisit the sum of £800 billion in the light of revelations this   morning that private sector auditors have underestimated private sector liabilities by a factor of 200 per cent., failing to take account of growing longevity?

Stephen Timms: I did not catch all of that, but I will not ask the hon. Gentleman to write to me—[Laughter.] What I can say is that the approach we have taken to reforming public sector pensions is not unusual; changes will apply to new members and not existing ones, and the agreement that has been made will deliver substantial expenditure savings, precisely as we always intended that it would.

Pensions Commission

James Duddridge: What assessment he has made of the Pensions Commission's second report.

John Hutton: The Government welcome the broad framework of the Pensions Commission proposals and options. I am particularly pleased that the report has recognised and endorsed the Government's approach to tackling the legacy of pensioner poverty that we inherited in 1997, through measures such as the pension credit. The Government will work towards the publication of a White Paper in the spring that will set out our full response.

James Duddridge: The Chancellor of the Exchequer has said that the Turner report recommendations may not be affordable. Is that still the case given the £10 billion that will be raised by equalising women's state pension age?

John Hutton: We have always made it clear that the proposals have to be affordable. We will take no risks with public expenditure, or with the fiscal rules, and when we produce our White Paper we shall set out the proposals in detail, of course with the funding that is necessary to support them.

Dari Taylor: Does my right hon. Friend accept that 70 per cent. of women do not receive the basic state pension, and that an even greater percentage are outside any private arrangement? Does he agree that to establish an effective pension system two characteristics must inform it? First, everyone must be included, carers as well as people earning an income, and secondly, the sums given must be adequate.

John Hutton: Yes. I agree absolutely with what my hon. Friend has said. It is generally recognised that women fare particularly badly under the current basic state pension rules. In making my statement to the House in November, when Lord Turner published his proposals, I tried to emphasise the importance that we attach to ensuring that any long-term reform proposals are fair to women and carers, and I can give my hon. Friend that absolute assurance once again today.

John Butterfill: Does the Secretary of State agree that a study of an otherwise excellent report shows that it has only one deficiency: it does not seem to contain recommendations on incentives for existing employers to continue with final salary schemes? Does he not agree that it would be in the national interest to provide such incentives? Does he have any ideas on that subject?

John Hutton: Clearly, we need to consider a range of issues in relation to the proposals that we put forward in the spring, and I am sure that that will be one of them. Of equal significance, however, to whether there are final salary schemes, career-average schemes or defined contribution schemes is the fundamental problem that not enough people are saving to provide an adequate retirement income for themselves. Lord Turner has done us all a great service in the House by drawing attention to that weakness in the current arrangements. He has made a series of specific proposals for a new national pension saving scheme to which we will give careful consideration. Of course, one of those issues should be the tax incentive arrangements to encourage savings—but that, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

John McFall: The Secretary of State has mentioned a national pension savings scheme whereby workers who are not enrolled in a company pension scheme would be automatically enrolled in such a system. Does he agree that, at a stroke, that would help the low-paid workers who have been largely absent from the savings industry? Given that high costs have bedevilled the savings industry, does he not think that that pension scheme would be a catalyst to driving down provider charges?

John Hutton: I can agree with my right hon. Friend. That is precisely what drove Lord Turner to make the recommendations that he made. The key to Lord Turner's proposals is auto-enrolment, so that everyone has the opportunity to participate in one of the low-cost pension savings schemes. That has obvious attractions, but we must look very carefully at the detail of Lord Turner's recommendations before we make our own detailed proposals in the spring.

David Laws: I should like to associate the Liberal Democrat party with the comments that the Secretary of State made earlier about former hon. Members who are respected and remembered on both sides of the House.
	On pensions reform, has the Secretary of State made any progress in discussing the issue with the Chancellor of the Exchequer over Christmas? In addition, has the Chancellor of the Exchequer completed the Treasury inquiry into the leaking of his letter prior to the Turner report?

Denis MacShane: The Ides of March.

John Hutton: Indeed. I was not at all sure whether anyone would be sitting on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench to ask what we could call a series of questions today.
	Leak inquiries are nothing whatever to do with the Department for Work and Pensions, and they are nothing to do with my responsibilities to the House as Secretary of State. On the specific question asked by the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), of course I continue to have friendly discussions with the Chancellor about the pensions reform proposals, and I am very confident that we will introduce a series of radical and far-reaching reforms for the pension system in this country that, I hope, will command cross-party consensus.

Child Support Agency

Andrew MacKay: What recent meetings he has had with the chief executive of the Child Support Agency.

James Plaskitt: I and ministerial colleagues regularly meet the agency's chief executive, Stephen Geraghty. Those meetings have mostly focused on the review of the agency that he has been carrying out, the findings of which we are now considering.

Andrew MacKay: As every month more and more of my constituents come to me with legitimate complaints about the inefficiency and incompetence of the Child Support Agency, is it not strange that Ministers did not bring their reforms before the House before Christmas, as was promised? Why did they not do so? What is the problem?

James Plaskitt: We asked Stephen Geraghty to undertake a very thorough review of the agency's workings. The agency's problems are well known to all hon. Members from our constituency casework, if through no other route, and the problems are deep-seated in the agency. It was therefore sensible to give Mr. Geraghty and his staff enough time to conclude their review. It is also appropriate that we should think about and reflect carefully on what he said, because we intend to produce proposals in due course to put the agency on a decent footing.

Eric Illsley: As part of that review, will the Government consider the complete abolition of the Child Support Agency, given the amount of uncollected maintenance, the problems of transferring to the new system and the problems that my hon. Friend says are well documented?

James Plaskitt: As my hon. Friend suggests, we are all very familiar with the agency's problems. I understand the temptation for some people on both sides of the House to leap from that to the assumption that we should just scrap the agency. I point out to him, however, that although the agency has plenty of problems—that is precisely why the chief executive is now reviewing them—it has collected £4.5 billion of maintenance since it was established. Last year alone, it collected £600 million in maintenance, and it now collects more maintenance than it costs to run, which was not the case initially. Some 500,000 children are supported by child maintenance as a result of the agency's work. Simply scrapping it or closing it down might look attractive in terms of dealing with some of its problems, but it would only create another heap of problems that somebody else would have to pick up. It is, in fact, a simplistic solution to suggest that the only thing to do is shut it down.

Patrick Cormack: Have the Government ruled out scrapping this extraordinary agency?

James Plaskitt: I think that I just covered that point in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley). It is important for us to focus on the primary purpose for which the agency was established: to secure a flow of maintenance for children and to ensure that parents live up to their responsibilities. As I have just said, the agency actually does that to a considerable extent. It has collected £4.5 billion of maintenance since it was established. For some parents and for some children, it works quite successfully; for far too many, it does not. The focus of the chief executive's efforts and our reflections is on dealing with the problems in the agency so that we can get it on to a stable footing.

Michael Connarty: I am sure that the Minister shares my concern that there are men who will refuse to pay for their children after they are born. Because of my increasing postbag from people trapped between a failing computer system and an absolutely sluggish clerical method of payment, my Christmas message to my constituents covered this issue, and I hope that this year we will somehow find a way to get them out of the trap that they are caught in by the CSA. How long will we have to wait for the Secretary of State's new year message of hope for these people?

James Plaskitt: I can tell my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State intends to come to the House shortly to make a statement that will indicate to him and to all other hon. Members the conclusions that we have reached on the basis of the chief executive's review.

Anne McIntosh: Is it not the case that the agency has been very effective at chasing those absent parents who have not been paying but less effective at chasing those parents who have yet to make a payment? Can the Minister confirm that he said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. Mackay) that he has now received and is considering the findings of the review by the CSA's chief executive? Can the Minister give us a date when the House will have an opportunity to consider his reforms, and will the Secretary of State be minded to reform the agency—or does he share the Prime Minister's view that it is simply not fit for purpose?

James Plaskitt: I can confirm that we have received the report from the chief executive and I can confirm that we are considering its findings. I can also confirm that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State intends to make a statement to the House shortly.
	As the hon. Lady joins the Opposition's Front-Bench team, I remind her of what the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman), who used to speak on this issue, said to The Guardian on 23 November. His conclusion was:
	"There are no easy solutions for the CSA."

ASW Sheerness (Pension Scheme)

Derek Wyatt: How many workers who were members of the failed pension scheme at ASW Sheerness have received compensation from the financial assistance scheme.

Stephen Timms: None as yet, although the first members of the ASW Cardiff scheme started to receive payments before Christmas. The ASW Sheerness scheme has not yet completed wind-up, and the scheme trustees have confirmed that they have no members aged 65 and over who would qualify for initial payments. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is looking forward to meeting my hon. Friend and former ASW employees later this week.

Derek Wyatt: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. What will happen to the 80,000 or so people who are caught in this trap once the £400 million is spent? What is the Government's plan B on this issue?

Stephen Timms: We estimate that 15,000 will benefit from the financial assistance scheme as constructed. We have made it clear that we will review the scheme, including the amount of funding that is available for it, in the next spending review and, at that stage, decide whether it would be appropriate to change its details.

Nigel Waterson: While it is good news for those at ASW Cardiff that they have finally received something, why has the process taken more than 18 months to achieve? When will the 249 other schemes that have already been notified to the   FAS be likely to receive some compensation? Will the Minister urgently review the amounts payable, the conditions for eligibility and the patent inadequacy of the funds earmarked for the FAS?

Stephen Timms: Let me make it clear that payments to the first of the former ASW employees were indeed made on schedule—before Christmas. However, it will still take some time for all people in that and other schemes to receive the payments that are due to them. This has been a pretty major exercise. We are expecting some 15,000 people to benefit, and a lot of data must be assembled to make the payments. I pay tribute to the staff, who have worked extremely hard to get the scheme in place, for what they have achieved and for securing the timetable and deadline that we set for making the first payments before the end of 2005.

Denis MacShane: My hon. Friend will be aware that the ASW workers are part of a broader network of people, especially steelworkers, who find that after decades of service to our country, they are without properly protected pension funds because for 18 years the Conservative party did not stand up to business and insist that adequate laws existed to protect such people. Will he acknowledge the work of trade unions such as Amicus and Community, and if and when this is needed, will he receive a delegation from them, because they know the real problems of these great workers, who we need to support as much as we can?

Stephen Timms: I agree with my right hon. Friend about the difficulties that many people have faced. I join him in paying tribute to the trade unions that have done a lot of work to draw attention to the problem. A large group of people—we have been especially concerned about those closest to retirement—faced the prospect of receiving almost nothing from a pension to which they contributed for many years. People who were within three years of their scheme pension age in May 2004 will be receiving assistance, in many cases, from the financial assistance scheme. I have had the opportunity to meet individuals from several trade unions and others who have made representations on the matter. As I said earlier, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will meet some people later this week, and I will certainly welcome the opportunity to talk to others in due course.

Pensioners (Benefits)

Paul Burstow: What estimate he has made of the average proportion of pensioners who will be eligible for means-tested benefits between 2005 and 2050.

Stephen Timms: Including housing benefit and council tax benefit, the proportion of UK pensioners entitled to means-tested benefits last year was around 50 per cent. The Pensions Commission has estimated that if basic state pension was uprated every year in line with prices and the pension credit guarantee level uprated in line with earnings, in 45 years' time, the proportion could be about three quarters.

Paul Burstow: I am grateful for that answer. The Pensions Commission also said that a significant growth in means-testing of the sort about which the Minister just talked would undermine voluntary pension saving, especially among those who are most vulnerable to retiring with an inadequate pension arrangement. Given that fact and the fact that, as the Minister said, one in three pensioners will be on means-tested benefits of one sort or another by 2050, is it not time to change the policy, so that we can ensure that everyone has a decent pension but is not reliant on means-testing?

Stephen Timms: Those were precisely the issues that were addressed in the Pensions Commission report that was published on 30 November. We are actively looking at its recommendations. The hon. Gentleman is right to make his point, but the Pensions Commission expressed concern about the large and rather unpredictable expansion of means-testing, rather than the current level of means-testing, which his question addressed. We want a system in which people can be confident that the decisions that they make now about saving for the future will still seem like the right decisions when they draw an income in retirement. I think that everyone in the House wants that, and I look forward to the hon. Gentleman contributing to the consensus that we hope will be achieved on the White Paper that will be published in the spring.

Huw Irranca-Davies: Does my hon. Friend recognise that the two greatest contributory factors to lifting pensioners in my constituency out of absolute poverty have been the pension credit and the winter fuel allowance? Will he thus ensure that in any reform of pensions for those poorest pensioners we do not—if this is not mixing metaphors when talking about pensioners—throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Stephen Timms: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have achieved the almost unprecedented situation in which pensioners are no more likely to be poor than anyone else in the population. That has hardly ever been the case in the past, and it is a particularly remarkable achievement after the long period of steady economic growth that we have enjoyed over the past eight years and in which earnings have risen so sharply. Pensioners, particularly less well-off ones, have shared in rising prosperity over the past few years. My hon. Friend is right: we have to make sure that we do not throw away the benefits of that improvement.

Philip Dunne: Does not the Minister recognise that the level of savings in the population who have yet to become pensioners has halved under this Government as a direct result of the increase in means-testing? That complacency and the fact that the Government can accept a means-testing level of 40 per cent.—the proportion of pensioners receiving pension credit—is quite astonishing. Does not the Minister recognise that the Turner commission anticipates that the level will rise to 70 per cent. unless the pension credit system is changed?

Stephen Timms: The hon. Gentleman may be under a number of misapprehensions. I gave the current figure for the proportion of pensioners entitled to means-tested benefits in my earlier answer. The figure was about 40 per cent. in 1997, under the Government of whom the hon. Gentleman was a supporter. Because of pension credit we have been able to reduce pensioner poverty dramatically.
	There is very little evidence that means-testing, under the previous Government or this Government, has reduced saving on the part of pensioners, but since 1997 there has been much greater confidence in the economy and in the future, which is largely what has led to the changes to which the hon. Gentleman refers. In 1992, when there was deep anxiety about the future of the economy, people saved more. Today they are more confident. [Interruption.] That is the reality. The greater prosperity and steady economic growth have been of immense benefit to everybody.

Pensioners (Benefits)

Gordon Prentice: What steps he is taking to ensure pensioners receive the benefits to which they are entitled.

Anne McGuire: We undertake a wide range of activities to ensure that pensioners receive the benefits to which they are entitled. This is done through direct mailings, leaflets and mass communications, such as press and TV advertising, as well as local take-up activity. In addition, since December 2005 customers who contact the pension credit application line to make an application for pension credit have been able to claim housing benefit and council tax benefit during the same call.

Gordon Prentice: That is a magnificent catalogue of things that we are doing, but I remind hon. Members that in 2003 the Public Accounts Committee told us that there was £2 billion in unclaimed pensioner benefits. I wonder whether the Minister, having reeled off that long list of achievements, can tell us what the figure is today.

Anne McGuire: I will give my hon. Friend the specific figures in writing later. Since the Public Accounts Committee's report, we have gone to great lengths to ensure that pensioners receive their entitlement, which I hope that people throughout the House accept they deserve. That includes making arrangements for filling in application forms and for turning round applications quickly so that the 4,638 householders in my hon. Friend's constituency who receive pension credit get it timeously and efficiently. The average award in the constituency is £42.93. We are making great efforts, and I hark back to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions Reform: what we have done in the last eight years has lifted millions of pensioners out of poverty.

Anne Milton: Can the Minister tell me whether there has been any audit of the effectiveness of press and TV advertising? Does she have any idea of the cost?

Anne McGuire: The advertising is geared specifically to the target group. The pension credit take-up rate that we have achieved meets our targets and we are heading towards almost 3 million pensioners claiming pension credit. I ask the hon. Lady to accept that the difference between the present Government and the Government whom she supported is that we tell people to what they are entitled, whereas for 18 years the Conservative Government kept those things hidden.

Anne Begg: The debate on this question and the previous one helps to explain why pensioners are often reluctant to apply for the benefits to which they are entitled: it is because the words "means-testing" have become dirty words. I and many other hon. Members know that means-testing is the very mechanism that has brought 1.9 million pensioners out of absolute poverty. As long as Opposition Members and the media decry means-testing and say that it is wrong rather than a good thing, it will be more difficult for pensioners to apply and feel that they are doing the right thing.

Anne McGuire: I thoroughly agree with my hon. Friend. Our aim in pensions and other benefits is to ensure that people know to what they are entitled. I, like many Labour Members, remember the days when people could not find out to what they were entitled from a social security system that was intended to disguise people's entitlement. The Conservatives made it very difficult for people to claim their entitlement. We have started to change that culture, and many pensioners in my hon. Friend's constituency and across the country now know that they can go in with dignity to the DWP—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

John Bercow: What is the increase in percentage terms in the take-up rate since the report of the Public Accounts Committee?

Anne McGuire: I will give the hon. Gentleman the details in writing after this Question Time.

Jim Sheridan: My hon. Friend will be aware that many pensioners throughout the country are extremely concerned about the forthcoming industrial action by the Public and Commercial Services union and the information issued by that trade union that the time taken to deal with people's applications for their entitlement could become even longer than they are experiencing now. Are pensioners' concerns misplaced?

Anne McGuire: On the particular matter of the PCS action, discussions are ongoing, so I think that it would be helpful to leave the matter there.

Child Poverty

Wayne David: What progress has been made in tackling child poverty since 1997.

Margaret Hodge: Since 1997, the number of children living in relatively low income households, after housing costs, has fallen by 700,000. At the same time, the number of children living in workless households has fallen by 400,000. However, poverty is about more than low income—it is also about health, housing and the quality of the environment. The seventh annual "Opportunity for all" report, which we recently published, sets out the Government's strategy for tackling poverty and social exclusion and presents information on the indicators used to measure progress against this strategy.

Wayne David: I thank my right hon. Friend that reply. I am sure that Opposition Members are as impressed as I am by her answer. Does she agree that such policies could not be pursued if there was a tax-cutting agenda?

Margaret Hodge: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend's statement. If we are to deliver on child poverty, we have to ensure that the commitment is affordable and that we do not take risks with public finance. I suggest—reflecting on the future, not the past—that the Conservative party's honeymoon period will run out very quickly if it does not think about the public expenditure commitments in some of its promises.

Hywel Williams: The fall in child poverty in Wales is especially welcome, given that it has been the second or third highest in the UK for many years. At the same time, however, in-work poverty has increased from about 30 per cent. in the mid-1990s to 40 per cent. today. The fact that 40 per cent. of people in work are still living in poverty is entirely unacceptable. What will the Government do about that, given that their efforts since the mid-1990s have clearly not worked?

Margaret Hodge: I am rather puzzled by the figures that the hon. Gentleman has given us and would be grateful if he would send them to me. I see that he is waving a piece of paper. Measures such as the introduction of the minimum wage are part of our strategy to ensure that work pays. Other measures such as the new deal, which the Conservative party attacked—I know that it was supported by the hon. Gentleman's party—are designed to ensure that not only the main earner in households but their partners work, so that families are lifted out of poverty through all those in the family contributing to family household incomes.

Stephen Hepburn: Is my right hon. Friend aware that four out of every 10 children in south Tyneside have no parent in work? Does she agree that jobs are needed in the north-east and not back-to-work schemes?

Margaret Hodge: Clearly, a back-to-work scheme would not work if we did not have jobs. I challenge my hon. Friend on his assumption that there are not job   opportunities in the north-east. As for the Government's record on bringing people into work, it is those areas that suffered the most under the previous Government from closures and the loss of jobs that have benefited the most from this Government through the new deal and also the very good stewardship of the economy, which has created jobs.

Alistair Carmichael: Did the Minister hear the Prime Minister claim yesterday that the Government had tackled child poverty? Does she think that that is an inappropriate use of language, given that one in three children still lacks adequate clothing, especially shoes and winter coats, and that the gap in educational achievement between the different socio-economic groups has, if anything, widened?

Margaret Hodge: I agree with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and for this reason. I think that the most dreadful legacy that we inherited from the previous Government was the growth in child poverty, together with the growth in division between the rich and the poor. The record of which I am proudest as a member of this Government is the measures that we have put in place that have lifted so many children and so many families out of poverty. We need to build on that record, but it is a record of which I am particularly proud.

Drug Addicts (Benefits)

John Mann: What estimate he has made of the number of drug addicts receiving incapacity benefit.

Margaret Hodge: As at May 2005, there were 48,300 incapacity benefit and severe disability allowance claimants whose primary diagnosis was recorded as drug abuse.

John Mann: One question that my right hon. Friend might want to consider is the rather new tendency of those who are on incapacity benefit to be termed "depressed", and therefore to receive enhanced disability living allowance, for example, on the basis that they are depressed. Will my right hon. Friend take a specific look at this and consider whether it is a barrier to return to work for some individuals?

Margaret Hodge: I congratulate my hon. Friend on the extensive work that he has undertaken in the area of drug abuse. Having prepared for questions today and having seen his record, I know that he has added much to the information and knowledge that we have, and on which we can build our policies.
	I agree with my hon. Friend, and the issue of mental illness and its link to incapacity benefit claimants is something that we are considering. The proportion of people who start an incapacity benefit claim because of mental illness has doubled in the past 10 years, and four out of 10 of those now coming on to incapacity benefit do so because of mental illness. It is my view that if we can get much stronger and earlier intervention and support through the health service so that people have access to appropriate counselling therapies, we could prevent many people from getting on to the route of being locked into benefit dependency. There is much sense in what my hon. Friend says, and we are exploring the issue in the development of our Green Paper proposals.

Henry Bellingham: Does the Minister agree that to wean drug addicts off the benefit culture, it is vital to have the right treatment facilities in place? Is the right hon. Lady satisfied that we have the right number of facilities? Is she satisfied also that we have the right number of qualified doctors available to run those facilities?

Margaret Hodge: As I am not a Health Minister, I do not have the figures for treatment centres and facilities before me, but we have greatly increased their number. I accept, however, that there is much more to do and further to go. Efforts to look at job opportunities for drug misusers and relinking them to the labour market are a difficult policy area, but we must ensure that we achieve the co-operation of people who are misusing drugs if we are to support them into a positive lifestyle in which they contribute to their local communities.

Ian Davidson: Does the Minister accept that many drug addicts follow a pattern of committing crime, going to prison, leaving prison and going on to benefit? While addicts are in prison and are a captive audience, we have an opportunity to give them proper education and support. Does she agree that much more needs to be spent in that area?

Margaret Hodge: I agree entirely, and my hon. Friend may be aware that just before Christmas we published a report that was the result of work between our Department, the Department for Education and Skills and the Home Office, which looked precisely at the issue of how we can improve the quality of support that we give people in prison to prevent them from returning there. That includes looking at drug misusers who, because of their habit, end up committing crime and therefore spending time in jail.

Pension Reform

Adam Afriyie: If he will bring forward legislation to reform the pension system in the current Session of Parliament.

Stephen Timms: We are planning for a White Paper in the spring in response to the report of the Pensions Commission. It will set out what legislation will be needed and a planned timetable for reforms. We are not planning to introduce pensions reform legislation before the summer recess.

Adam Afriyie: I continue to be concerned about more than 1 million pensioners who fail to receive pension credit or means-tested benefits, and I am sure that the Minister shares my concern. His Government, the Chancellor and his Department designed that complex tax and benefit system so, on their behalf, does he accept any responsibility whatsoever for the plight of the most needy and vulnerable in society because of the complexities of the pension system?

Stephen Timms: Let me start by agreeing with something that the hon. Gentleman said. I, too, think that it is important that people receive what they are entitled to, which is why we have been doing a great deal of work to increase the take-up of pension credit. A total of 2.7 million households now receive it, which is an increase of 900,000 over the minimum income guarantee and income support that preceded it. Between April and November, staff from the Pension Service carried out 600,000 home visits to help to make sure that people receive the benefits to which they are entitled. We are using direct mail, and are also doing a great deal of work to make sure that people receive what they are entitled to. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support staff in the Pension Service in his constituency who are working to ensure that people receive what they are entitled to.

Andrew Miller: Before we move to the legislative phase, would my hon. Friend support a programme, which could take place around the country, to aid public education and discussion of the issues affecting pensions? It is vital that we help people approaching pension age to understand their options and, equally, that we encourage younger people to take pensions much more seriously.

Stephen Timms: My hon. Friend is right, and that will be an important part of a successful programme of pensions reform. It is one of the reasons why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will shortly announce details of an expanded national pensions debate in the next few months, to contribute toward reform proposals. It is important, too, that we do more about financial education to make people aware of the opportunities available to them.

Disability (Negative Stereotypes)

Susan Kramer: What research he has conducted into the impact of negative stereotypes on people with disabilities.

Anne McGuire: The Prime Minister's strategy unit report, "Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People", published in January 2005, analysed the issues faced by disabled people in many areas of their lives, including prejudice and discrimination, and set all of us in Government the challenge of delivering substantive equality for disabled people within a generation.

Susan Kramer: Will the Minister therefore confirm that in the incapacity benefit Green Paper she and the Secretary of State will focus on the talents and potential of people with disabilities? To that end, can she confirm that in the Green Paper the level of benefit will not be cut, nor will a time limit be included, and nor will GPs who have written the largest number of sick notes be blacklisted—a very broad concern for the disability community?

Anne McGuire: I agree with the first part of the hon. Lady's question. I am sure that she would not expect me to go into any detail on the second part, as the Secretary of State has already made it clear that the Green Paper will be published shortly. On the general issue of images of disabled people, through my Department and across Government we have sought to ensure that looking at disabled people on the basis of what they cannot do is not acceptable. Indeed, we continually highlight the potential of disabled people and their skills and experience. That is the essence of our approach in our policies on disabled people.

Pathways to Work

Jim Devine: What assessment he has made of the impact of the pathways to work pilots; and if he will make a statement.

Margaret Hodge: The early evidence from our pathways pilots is very positive and has delivered the best results for long-term sick and disabled people of any intervention that has been tried and tested in any part of the world. Almost 150,000 people have started on a pilot, including more than 11,000 existing claimants, and 19,500 have secured a job. That represents an eight percentage point increase in people leaving incapacity benefit after six months, compared with the rest of the country.

Jim Devine: Unemployment in my constituency is 2 per cent; 9,000 new jobs have been created since 1997; and employment is at a record level— but we have 6,500 people on incapacity benefit. What advice can my right hon. Friend give to my constituents about the extension of the pilot?

Margaret Hodge: I confirm what my hon. Friend says. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to him last week because his constituency is one of the 100 constituencies with the highest number of incapacity benefit claimants. I suggest that he tells his constituents that they should look forward to the publication of our proposals in the Green Paper and the consequent policy changes and legislation, because for the first time ever we will provide them with the support and opportunity to realise their potential and enjoy the security of having a job and playing a full part in their community.

Points of Order

Hugh Robertson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Following a debate on elite athlete funding during the Report stage of the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Bill, the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) tabled a parliamentary written question that was answered by the Minister, saying that he had not received any funding submission from the British Olympic Association for elite sport in the run-up to the 2012 games. As soon as the British Olympic Association saw that answer, it said that it was incorrect, that it had had meetings with 23 out of the 26 sport national governing bodies and a series of meetings with the Department—and, most damagingly of all, that it had signed up to the UK Sport submission on the matter. Have you, Mr. Speaker, received any indication from the Minister that he wishes to correct the record?

Mr. Speaker: I have not, but if the answer was incorrect it should be corrected by the Department.

Andy Reed: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) for giving me prior notice of his point of order. As the person who asked the question, I was pleased with the answer that I received. I urge the hon. Gentleman not to ask the Minister to come forward. For the benefit of the House, the question was intended to ask about UK Sport submitting a funding bid to the House. The answer that I received was accurate. When the Minister reads this exchange tomorrow, I want him to know that I was satisfied with the answer. I am disappointed that the Opposition and the hon. Gentleman, who is a well respected Front-Bench spokesperson and whom I know well and regard as a friend in sporting matters, is using the matter to start to break the cross-party consensus on the Olympics.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That all goes to show that the Speaker should not be drawn into these matters.

Orders of the Day
	 — 
	Government of Wales Bill

[Relevant document: The First Report from the Welsh Affairs Committee, Session 2005–06, on the Government White Paper: Better Governance for Wales, HC 551.]
	Order for Second Reading read.—[Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified.]

Mr. Speaker: I should inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.

Peter Hain: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	May I express the House's condolences to the family of Lord Merlyn-Rees, who sadly died recently? He was a proud Welshman and perhaps one of the leading Welsh parliamentarians of his generation. The House remembers him with great affection.
	The House also remembers my friend and fellow Chelsea fan, Tony Banks, whose sparkle lit up public life. We express our sympathy to his wife, Sally, and share the anguish of his family and his many friends at his sudden and shocking death.
	I am sure that hon. Members will join me in expressing our sympathy and condolences to the families of the cyclists involved in the appalling accident in Abergele, which left carnage on the roads. I have asked for a report from the chief constable, which many hon. Members want to see, too.
	I welcome the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) to her new role as shadow Welsh Secretary. I last sparred with her across the Dispatch Box when I was at the Foreign Office, and I look forward to doing so again.
	It is now more than eight years since the people of Wales voted to establish the National Assembly for Wales, and I was proud to help lead that referendum campaign to bring long-needed devolution to Wales. Despite predictions to the contrary from our opponents, devolution has proved a success. When the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who is now back on the Opposition Front Bench, was Secretary of State for Wales, he said that he did
	"not think that it would do the people of Wales any favours to create separate and divisive constitutional arrangements."—[Official Report, 18 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 12.]
	When he was Leader of the Opposition, he declared the Conservative party to be
	"one hundred per cent. against these disastrous ideas of having a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly."
	In practice, however, devolution has strengthened the Union, not weakened it.
	Indeed, separatism has waned in Wales since the Assembly was established. Welsh independence is now seen as outdated and eccentric, whereas without the prospect of devolutionary reform from 1997, it could have gained momentum in a backlash against the over-centralisation of successive Conservative Governments. Many of my hon. Friends will, like me, recall the intense reaction in Wales against what I call "Redwooditis", which helped to turn the 4:1 defeat for devolution in the 1979 referendum into a victory in 1997. If there had not been a change of Government and if devolution had not been instituted, it is quite possible that the flame of separatism could have become a conflagration, instead of which it has been snuffed out. Devolution is helping to generate a new maturity in Welsh politics in which decisions affecting Wales are made in Wales by elected representatives who are accountable to the people of Wales. Just blaming London for policy shortcomings or failures no longer holds water—since 1999 the buck has stopped in Cardiff bay.

David Davies: The Secretary of State appears to be telling us that devolution was not about giving more power to the people of Wales and that it was merely a cunning plan to defeat Welsh nationalism. Is that what he is really saying?

Peter Hain: What I am really saying is that the false and specious charges made at that time by the Conservative party, including the hon. Gentleman, have proved groundless. The Conservatives said that devolution would result in the break-up of the United Kingdom and in independence and separatism gaining momentum. On the contrary, devolution has strengthened unity in the United Kingdom among the Welsh, the English and the Scots.
	In introducing the Bill, I am proud to carry forward a Labour tradition that goes back to the days of our first Welsh Member, who was a founder of our party, our first leader and a passionate supporter of devolution—Keir Hardie. More than half a century later, it was Labour that first created the Cabinet post of Secretary of State for Wales in 1964 and started the process of extending the responsibilities of the then Welsh Office so that it gained more and more power over matters affecting Wales. It was Labour that was elected in 1997 on a manifesto commitment to give the people of Wales an opportunity to vote for a new democratic Assembly; Labour that led the yes campaign to victory in the 1997 referendum; and Labour, after two successive elections, that has successfully led the people of Wales under the new devolved settlement. Labour was always the real party of devolution, decentralisation and bringing decision making closer to the people. This Bill confirms that Labour still is that party.

Ben Wallace: If it is good enough for the Welsh people to have devolution and power over their own decisions, and for Scottish people to have Members of the Scottish Parliament to make decisions on their behalf, why is it not good enough for people who live in England?

Peter Hain: I have always favoured regional government in England, and I think that its time will come.
	Instead of new conflicts predicted by Conservatives and other critics, devolution has brought Wales new confidence—anybody visiting Cardiff bay can sense that in the millennium centre and in the iconic new Assembly building, which will attract architectural interest worldwide. Global companies such as Airbus, General Dynamics and Logica CMG—all leaders in their sectors—have chosen Wales as their base over other British and European locations. That is testimony to the fact that Wales is no longer seen as a branch office for multinational companies. The Welsh economy has never been in better shape, with more jobs and prosperity than ever before and strong business growth. In an era of fierce global competition, Wales has been performing better than many economies across the world that have traditionally been our envy.

David Taylor: Part 5 of the Bill deals with financial aspects, including the creation of a Welsh Consolidated Fund. Would it not be wise, in the light of the immense progress that has been made as a result of our Government's policies on Wales, to find a way of equalising the treatment of regions in England that are comparable with Wales in relation to the Barnett formula? Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire have almost identical populations to Wales, as well as a very similar social and economic mix, but our treatment as regards Government-distributed funds is less generous.

Peter Hain: I applaud my hon. Friend for standing up for his constituents and vigorously making a case on their behalf. Nevertheless, the Barnett formula has served the whole United Kingdom very effectively, and the Government have no plans to change it.

Lembit �pik: The Minister will be aware that Lord Barnett, the instigator of the Barnett formula, feels embarrassed that it still bears his name and thinks that it should be changed. Why does he ignore the advice of the inventor of the formula that he seeks to defend, refuse to create a needs-based formula, and stick to an arcane formula that its inventor says is out of date?

Peter Hain: The hon. Gentleman has quoted Lord Barnett accurately. However, the Government have taken a careful look at the whole matter, and no advantage would be gained by reopening the question of the Barnett formula.
	Devolution has meant that people now feel a closer involvement in decisionson education, the health service, housing, transport and business supportthat affect their lives. People feel that Welsh Ministers are more accessible, because they are, and that their voice can be heard more directly by decision makers, because it is. The National Assembly for Wales has become an accepted part of the political landscape.

Huw Irranca-Davies: It is undoubtedly true that one of the successes of the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Assembly Government, for which they have been praised, has been the way in which they have listened to and consulted various parts of the community, particularly the voluntary and public sectors. That is as it should be. However, does my right hon. Friend accept that the Bill has a role to play in strengthening the voice of the private sector, because economic prosperity and improving standards of life for people in Wales also depend on the private sector pulling its weight and having its voice heard?

Peter Hain: My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the crucial role of business and the private sector in Wales's economic success. The AssemblyI know this because I have discussed it with the First Ministerwill want to maintain the closest co-operation and consultation. There is in the legislation, as there was uniquely in the previous ActI was responsible for accepting an amendment that resulted in the clausea duty to consult business. That duty remains. If my hon. Friend wishes to make any detailed points about strengthening it, I shall look at them sympathetically.

Nigel Evans: I am not here to fight old battles, but neither am I here to listen to history being rewritten. Why is the Secretary of State glorifying what he thinks are the Welsh Assembly's achievements when he knows that only one in four Welsh people voted for it in the referendum? He is talking about the voice of the people of Wales and their feeling closer to the Welsh Assembly, but he knows that at the last Assembly elections the turnout was miserable. What is he going to do to reconnect the Welsh Assembly with the Welsh people?

Peter Hain: Unfortunately, as the hon. Gentleman knows, turnout in all elections in Britain has been falling over the past few years and, arguably, since the second world war, and that includes the elections for the Welsh Assembly. I am not clear from the earlier part of his questionperhaps the shadow Secretary of State will respond to this laterwhether he is trying to turn back the clock. The Conservatives fought and lost that referendum.

Nigel Evans: Only just.

Peter Hain: There speaks the true voice of the Tory party, and we see that from the reasoned amendment. The Tories have not really learned the lessons. They lost the argument on devolution, and they should accept that.

Andrew Turner: The right hon. Gentleman referred to Members of the Welsh Assembly being in close touch with their constituents. Why are Welsh health outcomes so much worse despite much more expenditure than in England?

Peter Hain: The hon. Gentleman will know that levels of ill health and industrial disability as a result of our industrial legacy of mining and heavy industry, which are proportionately far higher in Wales than elsewhere, have been responsible for the problem that we have had to tackle. He will also know that performance right across the health service has been improving rapidly, especially over the past year, as waiting times have come down from their appalling levels and from the even more appalling levels that we inherited from the Conservatives.

John Bercow: Given that the Secretary of State has been celebrating the merits of devolution, how does he explain and justify clause 113, which gives him a power to intervene in certain cases with the introduction of secondary legislation? In those incidences, will such legislation be subject to the negative procedure or to its affirmative counterpart, and if it is the former, why?

Peter Hain: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the impenetrable nature of that question. Fortunately, I understand it. I have kept that power in order to protect Parliament's interests. Prior to, and in some cases even subsequent to, the full devolution of primary powers which is provided for in the Bill subject to a referendum, it is important to ensure that what Parliament decides is carried out. If there were any attempt by the Assembly not to do that, I would have a residual power to check it.

Dominic Grieve: Very centralising.

Peter Hain: The shadow Attorney-General mutters from a sedentary position that that is very centralising, but it is very much in tune with the settlement endorsed by the people of Wales, which puts Parliament in charge and allows the Assembly to have extra powers

Dominic Grieve: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Peter Hain: I am happy to give way, but I am not clear who is speaking for the Conservatives from the Front Bench. The shadow Welsh Secretary is welcome to intervene on me. If the shadow Attorney-General wants to do her job for her, I am happy to have him do it.

Dominic Grieve: The Secretary of State says that the proposal is in tune with the people of Wales and with democratic principles, but that is the very thing that the Bill is not, because it provides a mechanism for Government by Orders in Council, bypassing the scrutiny of this House and doing so without asking the Welsh people whether that is the system that they wish to have. Would he please address that issue, because it is fundamental?

Peter Hain: I will do so with great enthusiasm. There is the Conservative party seeking to speak with a modern, consensual voice in the language and rhetoric of its new leader, but actually returning to the old anti-devolution, anti-Wales, anti-Welsh Assembly politics.
	Let me respond to the hon. Gentleman's point by quoting the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Nick Bourne. He said:
	I think we have at the moment an insecure settlement which cannot persist.
	We either need to move forward to legislative powers or abolish the assembly and I think that's not an option. We've got to see how we can move things forward and that's got to mean legislative powers.
	He was accepting the need for new powers, whereas it appears that Conservative Front Benchers do not want to do that.

Dominic Grieve: The Secretary of State clearly did not listen to what I said to him. I did not suggest that there was anything undemocratic about devolving further powers to the Welsh Assembly. If the Government wish to give the Welsh Assembly primary legislative functionsfor which they provide in the Bill they can do so, if they can secure the approval of the Welsh people by referendum. But that is not what the Government are trying to do in the Bill. The most important part of it is about bypassing, ultimately, both the Assembly and this place to govern by Order in Council. What is the democratic justification for such an extraordinary system?

Peter Hain: I realise that the hon. Gentleman is not a Welsh Member of Parliament, but he clearly does not understand the Bill. The Bill provides for Parliament to be in charge, just as it is now. Instead of providing for the devolving of powers to the Assembly through primary legislation, it provides an opportunity to devolve powers to the Assembly through Orders in Councilsubject, as I shall explain, to prior scrutiny. And Conservative Front Benchers propose a referendum on that! What a bizarre, astonishing idea, and one that would cost 7 million.
	Can the hon. Gentleman imagine asking local people on their doorsteps, Do you want to vote yes or no on whether measures should be decided through primary legislation or through Orders in Council?? Can he imagine the response that he would receive?

Ian Lucas: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the great successes of the devolution settlement since 2001 has been the development of consideration of legislation by means of pre-legislative scrutiny through joint committees of the Assembly and the House of Commons? We have heard no call from the Conservatives previously for a referendum to seek the consent of the people of Wales to the procedure that already operates.

Peter Hain: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That illustrates the absurdity of the Conservative party, whose Front Benchers have contrived to get into a lather about this issue while hiding their anti-devolution, anti-Welsh Assembly, anti-Wales position. They are still the same old Tories.

Cheryl Gillan: I think that we should look quite closely at what the Secretary of State proposes in the Bill. Lord Richard has said:
	Let's be frank about it, it is a device to avoid having to come to Westminster and ask for primary powers to be formally devolved . . . you end up with . . . a situation in which Cardiff ends up with greater powers, Westminster can say they have not devolved primary legislative powers.
	Is that not what the right hon. Gentleman is trying to do? He is trying to keep the Labour party happy at Westminster and the Labour party happy in the Welsh Assembly. He will end up appeasing neither, and cheating the people of Wales.

Peter Hain: So there we have it: the first words spoken from the Dispatch Box by the hon. Lady, with her customary eloquence and courtesy. What did she say? She tried to construct a fantasy argument about Orders in Council versus Bills in the House, both of which are subject to the sovereign will of the House. If Parliament does not want to pass the Orders in Council, it does not have to. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) made clear, they willI hopebe subject to a process of prior scrutiny very similar to that which has been applied so successfully to Welsh legislation in recent years.

Huw Irranca-Davies: Will my right hon. Friend note the words of the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), whom I, too, welcome to her new role? She was quoted in the Western Mail of 17 December as saying:
	I have said I want to build on what has been achieved with the Assembly.
	Does my right hon. Friend see anything in the Opposition's amendment that would build on what has been achieved by the Assembly, or does he suspect that the Opposition are tearing down the whole devolution process?

Peter Hain: I suspect that it is exactly the latter. It is a wrecking amendment. The Conservatives, at the first opportunity, are asking us to kill the Bill. They could have achieved a debate, vote and decision on their concerns by tabling three new clauses on a referendum on bringing into force the part 3 Orders in Council, and an amendment to clause 7 on dual candidacy. If they were acting in the spirit of consensus promised by the Leader of the Opposition and echoed by the shadow Secretary of State, that is what they could have done. Instead, they have chosen to try to kill the Bill at the firstopportunity; the same old anti-devolution, anti-Welsh conservatives.

Elfyn Llwyd: In agreeing with the Secretary of State, may I say that the reasoned amendment is the most unreasonable thing that I have seen in a long time and defies any scrutiny? It is absolute nonsense. On Orders in Council, will the Salisbury convention apply to proposed legislation by whoever governs in Cardiff? Were he, of his own volition, to say that he was not prepared to accept a measure from the National Assembly, should not there be some form of review or appellate procedure within the Bill?

Peter Hain: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point in the first part of his question and asks a reasonable question to follow. If we were to see an unreasonable or anti-Welsh Secretary of State[Interruption.] If we saw another Secretary of State of the kind that we had in the 1990s before 1997, clearly there could be some tension, but there could be tension now. Under the existing settlement, it is far worse. A Welsh Assembly Government seeking to get an agreement from Parliament to allow it to take extra powers would have to fight for space in the Queen's Speech, so there is a business management obstacle as well as a policy principle one. At least we will now have an hour and a half of debate in the House, providing a much better settlement.
	I do not think that any appellate procedure is necessary because, as the hon. Gentleman will note, I have provided up to a maximum of 60 sitting days, including weekends, for a proper explanation to be given by the Secretary of State if he or she is not proceeding with a request. That would be subject to judicial review, providing the necessary safeguards.

Elfyn Llwyd: Far be it from me to take bread from the mouths of my fellow lawyers, but surely we should put within the Bill a procedure to avoid having to run back and forth to the High Court. Hitherto, the only assurance given in the White Paper is that the Secretary of State, or his successor, should not turn down legislation for a trivial reason. In two or three places in the Billclauses 98 and 101, I believethere are references to the Supreme Court. Could we not put in a form of reference to the Supreme Court to see whether the reason given was reasonable? That would be quicker than going through judicial review and, in my view, far better.

Peter Hain: I do not agree, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I shall look closely at what he has said, but his proposal is not necessary. In the end, politics will win the arguments. If we had a Conservative Secretary of Statewoe betide Wales were that to happenand he or she consistently defied the Assembly, the Conservatives would be swept out of Wales at the following general election, as happened in 1997. Also, the hon. Gentleman strengthens my argument, with which I know he agrees. He makes the point that Parliament is in charge of the new procedure, prior to primary powers going following a referendum. The hon. Gentleman is reinforcing my arguments against the Conservatives and their opportunistic and specious attempt to attack the Orders in Council proposal.

Lembit �pik: Is not the Secretary of State making the very point that is salient? He is allowing an anti-devolution Governmenta Conservative one, sayto obstruct devolution in Wales. I do not see why the Government insist on providing that weakness in this Bill when they are quite happy to devolve in a one-way fashion in respect of Scotland. Can he explain why he wants the Secretary of State for Wales to be almost a viceroy over Welsh affairs, given that the Government did not feel that such a step was necessary when the Scottish Parliament was introduced?

Peter Hain: The days of viceroys ended in 1997; since then, Secretaries of State for Wales have represented Wales and constituencies in Wales, and have spoken for Wales.
	On the hon. Gentleman's substantive point, he is right to the extent that, under the first stage of giving extra powers, Parliament remains in charge; that is the point that Opposition Front Benchers wish to ignore, or do not understand. The Assembly gets extra powersmeasure-making powers, as they are called in the Billonly if the House so decides. This House is in charge, as is the House of Lords. The point is that the objective of introducing primary powers, which we share in common, has to be endorsed by a referendum. I know that many Liberal Democrats object to that principle, but it is such a fundamental change that a referendum is required; that way, if such a radical departure from the existing settlement were contemplated, it would be endorsed by the people of Wales. However, compared with primary legislation procedure, this Orders-in-Council procedure is not a radical departure from the existing settlement.

Cheryl Gillan: On one side of the argument, the Secretary of State wishes to minimise the changes and to say that the Orders in Council are very trivial; but on the other, he wants the powers to be substantial. Will he confirm that he received a letter from me, dated 21 December, in which I explained in words of one syllable that although I had tabled a reasoned amendment, it should not be interpreted as opposition to every element of the Bill, and that I reassured him that where we have common ground he could expect our support? I hope that he will acknowledge that he received that letter and that he is misrepresenting my position, because I have told him and have given him every indication that I will be supportive where I believe that we have common ground and can work constructively. Otherwise, I think that the Bill deserves detailed scrutiny at every stage.

Peter Hain: I am sorry that the hon. Lady is wriggling and squirming in respect of her reasoned amendment. The truth is that, notwithstanding the letter that she wrote to meit is a very nice letterthe amendment rejects the Bill. If the Conservatives were to get their way tonight and marshal enough votes for their amendment in the Aye Lobby, they would kill the Bill and there would be no prospect of extra powers for the Assembly. That is the policy of the new Tory party, the new Cameron Conservatives, in Wales: to kill devolution stone dead here today, Monday 9 January. That is a great shame and I expected more of the hon. Lady. I thought that she would display a pro-Welsh position, as she was at least born in Wales, which is better than her predecessor. [Interruption.] Well, I represent, and was elected by, a Welsh constituency, unlike the hon. Lady.

Mark Tami: The amendment clearly says:
	declines to give a Second Reading.
	That is as clear as it can be, is it not?

Peter Hain: I realise that the hon. Lady has had a lot of trouble in her early days as shadow Welsh Secretary. She did not know who the Welsh national rugby coach was; she did not know the number of Assembly Members; she did not even know what Brain's beer was. Now, she does not know the terms of her own reasoned amendment, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) suggests, would kill the Bill stone dead.
	We need to make some progress in getting more powers for Wales. The Welsh Assembly Government may not be any more admired than any level of government ever is, but they have won widespread praise for introducing innovative and popular policiesthe Children's Commissioner for Wales, the Welsh baccalaureate, free bus travel for the over-60s and free school breakfasts, for examplesome of which have been emulated elsewhere in the United Kingdom. After six years of activity and two full elections, it is right that we should take stock of how the devolution settlement in Wales is working and bring forward practical, commonsense reforms to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the people of Wales.
	Much has changed since the House debated the original Government of Wales Bill. The budget of the   National Assembly has nearly doubled, and the responsibilities of the Assembly have also increased. In the past 18 months alone, this House has resolved to transfer from Westminster to Cardiff bay a number of important new policy areas: animal welfare, the fire and rescue services, student support and more children's services.
	Devolution has not stood still; it has evolved, and through the measures contained in this Bill it will evolve still further. But there is widespread acceptance of the need for reform. The Assembly's corporate status, modelled on local government, was an innovative idea in theory, which has proved less successful in practice. All parties accept the case for change, and the Bill will reform the internal architecture of the Assembly to provide for enhanced democratic accountability.

Albert Owen: My right hon. Friend mentions democratic accountability. One of the reasons the Assembly was set up was to do away with the quango state. Does the Bill contain any provision that will aid that process? Under the present settlement, it is difficult for the Assembly to make Wales more democratic in that way.

Peter Hain: As my hon. Friend knows, the Welsh Assembly Government have already put in train a series of measures abolishing the quangos and absorbing their functions into the Assembly, and they will be able to go further to the extent that the Order in Council procedure gives them more scope. However, they will not be able to do much more under the Bill.

Ian Davidson: My right hon. Friend may not have been sufficiently bold on the question of democratic accountability. In the second ballot at the last elections, 310,658 Welsh voters voted Labour and got not a single candidate elected. Given that we have already heard that the turnout in the Welsh Assembly elections was low, does not that clearly demonstrate that proportional representation is unfair and has not worked?

Peter Hain: You will know that my hon. Friend represents a Scottish constituency, Mr. Speaker, but I do not intend to draw you into the debate. What can I say in answer to that question?
	Furthermore, there is widespread recognition throughout Wales that the Assembly needs a stronger and quicker mechanism for achieving its legislative priorities. That is why, in our general election manifesto, we pledged to deliver enhanced powers for the Assembly. Under the current devolution settlement, it is for Parliament to determine what additional powers the Assembly may require.
	Over the past eight years, the system has worked well, with Parliament passing four Wales-only Billswith two more being considered this Sessionand 34 other Bills containing Welsh clauses. But it has still meant that proposals from the Assembly must compete for time with the Government's own legislative priorities. The Bill will therefore establish a mechanism to free the Assembly from the Westminster logjam by transferring legislative responsibility to Cardiff in relation to defined matters, approved on a case-by-case basis by Parliament. Those new powers will ensure that the Assembly gets the legislative tools it needs to do the job quicker and more easily than is possible at present, but Parliament will still be the arbiter over whether powers are transferred. So the provisions represent a development of the current settlement, and not a fundamental change.

Philip Davies: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Peter Hain: I wish to make a little progress and then I shall be happy to let the hon. Gentleman intervene.
	The Bill also ensures that, for the first time ever, primary powers for Wales are on the statute book, subject to a referendum. Some have shouted betrayal because primary powers are not being delivered immediately, but such a fundamental change from the 1997 settlement, which was endorsed by a referendum, could be changed only by another referendum. To advocates of primary powers, I say, Don't shout at the Government, but go out and win the argument. Make the case to the people of Wales. If you win the argument, this Bill provides a mechanism for delivery. The ball is now in your court.
	An unwelcome development since the 1998 Act was passed has been the problem of defeated constituency candidates being elected through the backdoor on their party's regional list. Politicians are placing an each-way bet on constituency elections, with the electorate losing out. As a Government, we are determined to put the voters back in charge, restoring their democratic right to reject a constituency candidate. We have a clear manifesto commitment and will press the case for reform.
	The Bill delivers a lasting settlement that will settle the constitutional argument in Wales for a generation or more. Instead of constantly revising and returning to the issue of its powers and electoral arrangements, the Assembly will now be able to focus on policy development and delivery, in education, health and all the other devolved fields. The constant demand More powers will be redundant: they will be on the statute book when the Bill receives Royal Assent, ready for implementation after a successful referendum. Instead of powers, the real question will be: are the Welsh Assembly Government delivering or not? What are the future policies necessary to build a world-class Wales? Political arguments over policies will replace political arguments over powers, so that Welsh political culture gains full maturity.

Adam Price: What is the Secretary of State's response to the Electoral Commission's view that the changes proposed for the voting system are perceived as politically partisan and could lead to less participation in the Assembly elections?

Peter Hain: I think it is wrong and I shall cite alternative evidence later in my speech. The hon. Gentleman might consider experience across the world, in Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, Thailand and a number of other places, where the issue has arisen but the abuse that has taken place in Wales has not occurred to the same extent. I shall come back to that point.

Dominic Grieve: The possibility of people both standing for a seat and being elected from the list when they were defeated was inherent in the system set up in 1998, and is an inevitable consequence of such a system of proportional representation. Indeed, it exists in other parts of the United Kingdom. So on what basis has the Secretary of State suddenly decided that Wales should not have that system, which is common throughout the world, even if it has come in for criticism? Why has he decided that Wales uniquely should not have it, and why has he done so in a manner of which the Electoral Commission has been very critical?

Peter Hain: I was about to come to that point. The problem with being so generous in accepting interventions is that they come before the arguments have been made.
	In 199798, I stood at the Dispatch Box with my colleagues and took the Bill throughindeed, the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) was on the Opposition Front Bench at the time, opposing it, as Conservatives always oppose devolution progress in Walesbut none of us foresaw a situation in which the system would be so widely abused. People in Wales say to me, If I want to defeat a constituency candidate because I don't like them, why should they pop up on the list? That is the fundamental point. We are putting the voters back in charge. If they do not want to elect somebody, they do not have to do so. There should not be a situation where people can decide to place a both-way bet, stand in both categories and win even if they are kicked out by the electorate.

Angus MacNeil: Does the Secretary of State concede that with first past the post somebody could be elected merely on 26 per cent. of the vote, with four parties? The list system compensates for the inequities of first past the post.

Peter Hain: The hon. Gentleman has only just wandered into the debate and his point is rather wandering as well. All we are saying is that the list system will remain and people can make a choice. They can decideas Labour Members are doing. As I shall explain later, half a dozen Labour Members will be faced with a tough choice. They face swings against them of less than 3 per cent. Going by the general election performance last year, their seats will be vulnerable in the next Assembly election. They have to face that choice; they do not have the lifebelt of being able to stand in the list, any more than candidates of any other party.

David Jones: Does not it operate to the advantage of those Labour constituency Members that a softer candidate will be standing against them on a first-past-the-post basis? The more able candidates will stand on the regional list rather than on first past the post. Is not that precisely what the Secretary of State is hoping for?

Peter Hain: There we have it in its full glorythe real Conservative face of Wales exposed. Why have the hon. Gentleman and other Welsh Conservatives joined an unholy coalition on the issue with Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats? Why are they so afraid of taking their choice to the people? Are they afraid that they will lose constituency elections and therefore opt for the lifebelt of the list? If so, they might as well not bother to stand in the constituencies in the first place. The hon. Gentleman represents the constituency of Clwyd, West, where at the last Assembly elections, three of the candidates who were defeated ended up winning on the lists. Three of the people in Clwyd, West who were booted out by the electorate ended up as Assembly Members, competing against the winning Assembly Member, Alun Pugh.

Elfyn Llwyd: I am not in an unholy alliance with anyone, as far as I knowat least, I was not until just nowbut all the extrinsic and academic evidence concludes that the proposal is partisan, in favour of new Labour. In coming to that formulation, did the Secretary of State take advice from President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine?

Peter Hain: No, but I studied what has happened in Mexico and Thailand, and in Canada in New Brunswick, among other provinces, and what is being done in New Zealand. I will quote alternative evidence later in my speech, including from a much more respected academic commentator on Wales than those who have been quoted.

Cheryl Gillan: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Peter Hain: As I am in a charitable mood, of course I give way.

Cheryl Gillan: On this occasion, there could be a holy alliance between hon. Members because certainly some people have to think straight. The Secretary of State seems to be taking advice from people throughout the international arena, but I do not understand why he ignored the advice of the First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, who when giving evidence thought that the problems could be dealt with by using a protocol along Scottish lines. Why has the Secretary of State ignored the First Minister? Can we expect these electoral changes to be introduced in Scotland shortly?

Peter Hain: I do not know where the hon. Lady has done her research, but the First Minister is fully signed up to this policy. At a special Welsh Labour conference on 11 September 2004, he voted for and backed the manifesto on which we stood in May last year that unanimously endorsed the policy. He is enthusiastically backing the policy and she should not take his name in vain in that way.
	Although the proposals in the Bill were in Labour's manifesto for an historic third term, it is right to acknowledge the part that people from all parties have played in the debate on the future powers and electoral arrangements of the Assembly. Those people include Lord Richard of Ammanford and the members of his commission who submitted a detailed report to the Welsh Assembly Government in 2004. I pay tribute to Lord Richard for the strength of his advocacy. He remains a tribune for Welsh reform, and we look forward to his contributions when the Bill reaches the House of Lords.
	Members of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), have provided expert analysis to inform the debate about the Bill, as have members of the Assembly Committee, chaired by the Presiding Officer, Lord Elis-Thomas.
	The vast majority of clauses in this 165-clause Bill should have cross-party support. Ninety-three clauses re-enact, with only minor modifications, those from the 1998 Act. For example, clauses 145 to 147 on Welsh public records, which applied just to the Assembly as a corporate body under the old Act, have been modified to apply to the Welsh Assembly Government and the Assembly Commission separately.
	A further 47 entirely new clauses have been incorporated into the Bill to establish a proper legislature to hold the Executive to accountsomething that all parties support. Many of those provisions draw directly from existing statutes, which provide a successful model for what we are trying to achieve in Wales. For example, the provisions establishing the Assembly Commission are drawn almost word for word from the provisions in the Scotland Act 1998, which set up the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. I hope that those clauses, too, will prove uncontentious, so that the vast majority of clausesat least 140 of the 165 clauseswill have cross-party support. Just 24 clauses concern extra powersthe real meat of the Billand one clause from the 1998 Act has been amended so as to ban candidates from simultaneously standing in both a constituency and for a region, whether as a list candidate or as an individual.
	The Bill will set up the Welsh Assembly Government as an entity in its own right, rather than as an off-shoot of the National Assembly, as it is now. In future, it will be much clearer who is responsible for taking decisions and who should be accountable for them. Instead of an Assembly modelled on old local government lines, there will be a new Westminster-type structure with a clear distinction between the Welsh Assembly Government and the Assembly acting as a proper legislature, holding Ministers to account. This change has support from all parties in the Assembly and will make for better government and better public understanding of the differences between the responsibilities of Ministers on the one hand, and the role of Opposition parties and Back Benchers of all parties on the other.
	Secondly, the Bill will give the Assembly enhanced powers to take decisions affecting the people of Wales in areas approved by Parliament on a case-by-case basis.

Philip Davies: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Peter Hain: I will make progress, then take more interventions.
	Through this new, streamlined procedure, the Assembly will be able to achieve its legislative priorities more quickly and easily, without getting caught up in the inevitable Westminster logjam. The Bill does that by building on the current devolution settlement, and this is the key point. Westminster will still be in charge, deciding on the principle of granting new powers to the Assembly, but the detailed work on policies affecting Wales will increasingly be carried out in Wales.
	To achieve this, the Bill establishes a new Order-in-Council procedure that will enable Parliament to grant the Assembly the power to make its own laws over the specific matter set out in the Order in Council. The order will not be long and will not set out the detail of the policy that the Assembly wishes to implement, although that will be explained in an explanatory memorandum, because that will be a matter for the Assembly to determine. The order will simply define the scope of the powers being conferred on the Assembly and Parliament will vote on the principle of the Assembly acquiring those powers.
	It may help the House if I briefly outline the main procedural stages where the Welsh Assembly Government have initiated a proposal for an Order in Council.

Roger Williams: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Peter Hain: I would like to explain the procedure, then I will take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman.
	First, a preliminary draft Order in Council would be prepared following discussion between the Welsh Assembly Government, relevant Whitehall Departments, and the Wales Office. Secondly, the preliminary draft would be submitted to pre-legislative scrutiny by Parliament and the Assembly. The precise nature of pre-legislative scrutiny would be a matter for the House and for the Assembly to determine. The processes are therefore not laid down in the Bill, but I hope that the successful model of the Welsh Affairs Committee scrutinising Wales-only Bills, such as the Transport (Wales) Bill, in tandem with the relevant Assembly Committee could be applied to Orders in Council, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) suggested.
	That process of pre-scrutiny will give all Members of this House an opportunity to become involved if they wish in examining requests from the Assembly at an early stage, with the Secretary of State and the Assembly making modifications as appropriate in response to parliamentary recommendations. Parliament will therefore be an active player in shaping the future powers of the Assembly.
	After pre-scrutiny has been completed, there would be a formal statutory process for agreeing the final text. Once the final text of a draft order had been approved by the Assembly, it would be sent to the Secretary of State who must, by the end of 60 sitting days, either have laid the draft Order in Council before both Houses of Parliament or have given the First Minister written reasons for not being prepared to do so. The 60-day deadline is needed principally to cover those occasions, which I believe will be infrequent, where there has not been consensual co-operation between the Welsh Assembly Government and the Wales Office in the development of the proposal.Once the order has been laid by the Secretary of State, it would then have to be approved by both Houses of Parliament on an affirmative resolution.

Dominic Grieve: I want to understand a little more about the pre-legislative scrutiny. If I understand the Secretary of State's position, the scrutiny will be on not the details of the legislation, but the principles of the area that will be delegated for the Assembly to legislate on. Does that not require a considerable abdication of the responsibility of Members of this House, without the people of Wales endorsing that and saying that they would prefer the Assembly to do something, rather than hon. Members? How can the Secretary of State justify such a major constitutional shift without going to the people of Wales and asking them to endorse it by referendum?

Peter Hain: Because, quite simplyI have dealt with this point beforeit is not a major constitutional shift. Parliament will still be in charge. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman is not opposing the NHS Redress Bill, which includes a framework clause to give the Assembly full powers to determine a ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces. I am surprised that he is not up in arms about that, although perhaps he will be now that I have suggested it.
	Since 1999, legislation that has gone through the House has provided for the Assembly to take through regulations by secondary legislation to determine detailed policies. There is no difference in principle between that and a procedure through which the Assembly draws up Assembly measures by Orders in Council rather than primary legislation, because Parliament is still in charge. Each Order in Council will be accompanied by an explanatory memorandum that will explain the provision's purpose fully to all hon. Memberswhether they are Welsh or notso that they will be able to take a view on the matter.

Roger Williams: If Orders in Council are such a good idea, why did neither the Government nor the Labour party in Wales make that suggestion in evidence to the Richard commission so that it could give a verdict on it?

Peter Hain: We have taken careful account of the Richard commission report and the debate that has taken place since its publication. The nub of the issue is this: the Liberal Democratsthe hon. Gentleman is not a bad fellow, so I am sorry that he has joined in this bad habithave said that they want primary powers. I respect that and, in fact, agree with it as a matter of principle. However, they want those powers without a referendum. They want to jump straight to primary powers through the Bill, but it would not be acceptable to make such a fundamental change to the devolution settlement without a referendum, which is what it would be because Parliament would be no longer in charge, although it is of course sovereign in every respect in the United Kingdom in a theoretical and actual fashion. We will make more progress to overcome some of the problems that the Assembly has had in recent years by giving it greater discretion while Parliament remains in charge. That is the point of the Bill and the new first stage involving Orders in Council, which I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would welcome.

Philip Davies: Given the narrow result of the referendum that set up the National Assembly for Wales in the first place, and the low turnout, what evidence does the Secretary of State have that people in Wales want the Assembly to have more powers?

Peter Hain: I do not know the hon. Gentleman's majority, but a victory is a victory under our democracy. If one wins the vote, one wins. The Welsh people voted, although, admittedly, the result was uncomfortably narrow, as I remember well. These repeated attacksthe hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) made one in his best Rottweiler fashionon the verdict of the Welsh people show that the Welsh Conservatives have never accepted the devolution settlement.

David Davies: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Peter Hain: No. I am sorry, but I need to make progress and have already given way to the hon. Gentleman.
	If Parliament agrees that enhanced powers on a particular matter should be conferred on the Assembly, and once the Order in Council has been made, the Assembly can deliver new made-in-Wales legislation in relation to that matter. The new laws will be called Assembly measures, and the Assembly's arrangements for scrutinising and approving measures will closely follow the procedures used in this House for considering primary legislation. Although the detail will be a matter for the Assembly itself to determine, the Bill requires that the Assembly provides for three stages of consideration on the   principle, detail and the final text of proposed measures, which are analogous to Second Reading, Committee and Third Reading. That reflects an important principle underlying the Order-in-Council procedure. The proposed powers to be conferred would be bestowed by Parliament not on individual Ministersnot on the Executivebut on an elected legislature, with its own rigorous procedures for scrutiny both of the Executive and of legislative measures.
	I have discussed this matter with the Chairs of both the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Constitution Committee of the House of Lords. They agree that there is an important distinction to be made between powers conferred on an elected legislature and those delegated to a Secretary of State. There should therefore not be the same concerns expressed over powers conferred on an elected, accountable law-making body such as the Assembly, with its own scrutiny processes, as have been expressed over powers delegated to Ministers.
	The Government believe that this new procedure will be of immense benefit to the Assembly Government in enabling them to carry out their functions in the devolved fields of responsibilities. Of the bids for legislation that the Assembly has made over the past six years, the vast majority have been on matters that have excited little or no parliamentary controversy, such as the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Bill and the Public Audit (Wales) Bill, and all but two of them could have been accommodated under the new streamlined process provided for in this Bill. The exceptions are the demands for the Assembly to have the power to ban hunting and to have control over shop opening times. An additional one may be the request for St. David's day to be a bank holiday. Those could not be delivered under the Order-in-Council process, as they lie outside the existing devolved settlement.
	The procedure will give the Assembly much wider flexibility and discretion, while preserving the key pillar of the existing devolution settlement: it is Parliament that will determine the new powers that the Assembly will acquire. Parliament, as ever, remains sovereign. The procedure will also relieve pressures on parliamentary business managers from Assembly bids for Bills.
	As we have heard, the Opposition suggest that the new Order-in-Council procedure might be used to give the Assembly primary powers through the back door. That is simply not the case, as clause 94 makes abundantly clear. If the Assembly ever attempted to acquire such powers by the back door, I as Secretary of State would block it, so would this House and so would the Lords. It is inconceivable because there is a triple lock to prevent it. Parliament remains in charge.
	The additional powers offering a more streamlined route for Assembly decision making fall within the settlement endorsed in the 1997 referendum. However, it may prove at some time that even they are still insufficient to address the needs of the people of Wales. The Bill therefore makes provision to confer full primary powers on the Assembly, subject to a referendum. I am proud to be the first Secretary of State for Wales to seek to place primary powers on the statute book. But, as I have explained, it is essential that such a fundamental change to the devolution settlement should first be approved by the people of Wales through a referendum, and it would be hugely damaging to the cause of devolution to move to that stage before there was widespread agreement in Wales. For that reason, the Bill includes a number of safeguards to ensure that there is no premature move towards primary powers.
	First, the Bill ensures that a referendum would be triggered only if supported by two thirds of all Assembly Members. Secondly, the Bill places a responsibility on the Secretary of State to ensure that a referendum could take place only after adequate public consultation. Finally, a referendum order would require the approval of both Houses of Parliament by affirmative motion and two thirds of all Assembly Members before it could proceed. Taken together, these safeguards will ensure that a strong, multi-party consensus must exist before a referendum can be calledsomething that is not likely to happen in the near future.
	These provisions are vital to settle the constitutional debate in Wales. By legislating for primary powers now, we avoid the need for a further Government of Wales Bill. Instead of the constant distraction of endless constitutional argument, this Bill puts primary powers on the statute book awaiting the verdict of the electorate. Instead of being the domain of political and constitutional anoraks, the question of the Assembly's powers will be in the hands of the Welsh people. Instead of sniping from the sidelines, proponents of primary powers will have to win the argument.
	Those leading the calls for an early referendum are doing a disservice to the cause of devolution in Wales. To call a referendum on primary powers now, when we know that it would fail, would not only destroy the chance of enhancing the Assembly's powers, but do terrible damage to devolution itself. Just look at the aftermath of the no vote in 1979, when the prospect of devolution was taken off the agenda for nearly 20 yearsa generation. I know that some will say that certain opinion polls show a majority in favour of a Scottish-style Parliament, but I caution them to remember the opinion polls prior to the referendum in 1997, which predicted an overwhelming victory for the yes campaign. The votes did not reflect the headlines in the end, and I believe that the same would be true today.
	Let me now deal with our proposals to reform the electoral system for the Assembly. In 1998, the Labour Government established the additional member system for elections to the Assembly. Broadly speaking, that electoral system has been a success: it has preserved the strong tradition of individual constituency representation that is fundamental to our democracy while delivering a system of fair votes that has improved democratic accountability in Wales. It has even thrown a life belt to the Welsh Conservative party, although that is not something that I would celebrate. However, although it has worked well in ensuring fair representation in the Assembly, I, as one of the Ministers who took the Bill through the Commons, never imagined the abuses that have resulted.
	The system as it has operated in Wales has a major weakness. A widespread practice since the Assembly was established has been that candidates who are rejected by a particular constituency have secured backdoor election as Assembly Members through the regional list and so have been able to claim to represent the constituency that rejected them. In Clwyd, West in 2003, three of the four defeated candidates were subsequently elected to the Assembly through the regional list. That practice clouds political accountability and denies the voters their right to reject a particular candidate at the ballot box. The change made by the Billrequiring candidates to choose whether to stand for a constituency or a regional listwill put the voters in charge.

Andrew Pelling: Is the Secretary of State saying that that abuse is peculiar to the Welsh political culture or that dual candidacies per se are bad news? Do the Government believe that the practice should be ruled out in, for example, London assembly elections?

Peter Hain: The Bill is about Wales. One of the things that Conservatives find difficult to understand is that devolution allows different parts of the United Kingdom to operate in different ways. Circumstances have arisen in Wales that have allowed widespread abuse and we are correcting that.

Cheryl Gillan: Is the Secretary of State prepared to place in the Library details of all the objections and problems that have arisen from the present electoral system? He constantly refers to a body of evidence that appears not to exist. I do not know how many letters he has had, but academics and those who have examined the system, including the Electoral Commission, say that there is no great body of evidence to justify the changes that he is proposing. Is he prepared to put the evidence in the Library and show us how overwhelming the demand for change is?

Peter Hain: I shall certainly reflect on the hon. Lady's request, but I am about to explain the circumstances that justify the policy set out in the Bill.
	It cannot be right for losers to become winners through the back door, despite having been rejected by the voters. That is an abuse of democracy, as is the practice adopted by 15 of the 20 list AMs of using taxpayers' money to open constituency offices in the seats in which they were defeated and targeting those seats to win next time by cherry-picking local issues against the constituency AMs who beat them.
	The hon. Lady asks for evidence. Criticism of the existing system has been widespread. Lord Richard recently told the Welsh Affairs Committee:
	There is something wrong in a situation in which five people can stand in Clwyd, none of them can be elected, and then they all get into the Assembly. On the face of it that does not make sense. I think that a lot of people in Wales find that it does not.
	The hon. Lady asked for evidence and I am now about to give it to her. The eminent Welsh academic, Dr. Denis Balsom, said in evidence to the Richard commission:
	Candidates use the list as an insurance against failing to win a constituency contest. This dual candidacy can also confuse the electorate, who may wish to consciously reject a particular candidate only to find them elected via the list. It should remain a basic democratic right not to elect a particular candidate or to be able to vote a Member out.
	Lord Carlile, the former Welsh Liberal Democrat[Interruption.] This is not against a list system. It is saying to candidates, Make a choice. Why are they so afraid of making a choice? Stand and face the verdict of the people in the constituency or stand on the list, whichever they wish. It is[Interruption.] I have been asked for evidence and I have taken up a great deal of time in interventions.
	Lord Carlile, the former Welsh Liberal Democrat leader, has said:
	many in Wales will welcome . . . the removal of the absurd dual candidacy opportunity.[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 June 2005; Vol. 672, c. 1217.]
	The former Conservative Secretary of State for Wales, Lord Crickhowellthe Conservatives want evidencehas said that the
	present arrangements are really pretty indefensible.[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 June 2005, Vol. 672, c. 1216.]
	In the consultation on the White Paper, I received only one formal response from the Conservative party, but it was a most significant one. It was from the Preseli Pembrokeshire Conservative association. The hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) is swelling with pride as the association's representative. It said:
	We agree with the proposal to prevent individuals from simultaneously being candidates in constituency elections and being eligible for election from party lists.
	Game, set and match.

Dominic Grieve: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Peter Hain: I will give way for the shadow Attorney-General to disagree with the Preseli Pembrokeshire Conservative association.

Dominic Grieve: Given the importance that the Secretary of State attached to this issue as a matter of principle, when will we have a statement from the Prime Minister that the other systems of proportional representation in the United Kingdom that the Government have set up will be altered? Does the Secretary of State understand that asking the House to treat something in isolation can be perceived, however great his vehemence, as gerrymandering? We are not prepared to tolerate that. If he wishes to change the system, it should be changed as an issue of principle throughout the country and not for the convenience of the Welsh Labour party.

Peter Hain: I am glad that I took that intervention. That is because I have further evidence explaining exactly why it is not in any sense gerrymandering or partisan. The hon. Gentleman asks why there should not be a statement by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. The abuse has happened in Wales and we are correcting it in Wales. The Bill is about Wales. I know of no similar complaints about London. Indeed, I know of no similar complaints on an equivalent scale anywhere else to those that have existed in Wales.

Huw Irranca-Davies: Does the Secretary of State share my immense regret that we have to discuss these matters today? We do so with deep regret because those of us, with the best intentions, who supported the Government of Wales Act 1998, did not foresee the level of abuse that we have had. I would welcome a strong Liberal Democrat presence in my constituency to bring the fight to me, but regrettably that presence in adverts, local constituency offices and surgeries is in the target seats that the Liberal Democrats hope to win in the first-past-the-post system.

Peter Hain: Exactly.
	The comments that I quoted earlier from Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, independents, academics and even from the Preseli Pembrokeshire Conservative association, a fountain of wisdom in the Conservative party alone on this matter, show that there is a body of evidence, and there is much more, putting the case for

Roger Williams: Perhaps the Secretary of State will help us on Northern Ireland. Is dual candidacy a feature of the Northern Ireland election system, and has he any views on that?

Peter Hain: Different parts of the United Kingdom have different[Interruption.] I expect the Conservatives to scoff at devolution. That is what they have done all along and they always will do, as they are doing today. They are seeking to kill the Bill. However, I do not expect the Liberal Democrats to deny that different parts of the United Kingdom can develop in different waysindeed, that is the purpose of devolutionand embrace different practices.

Hywel Williams: The Secretary of State cited as an abuse that he wishes to remedy the fact that list Members set up constituency offices. How would his proposal stop them doing so in constituencies in which they intend to stand?

Peter Hain: It would not stop them setting up constituency offices. However, I think that the Assembly may make a decision in its standing orders to stop that practice, and I hope that it does so. I am glad that a member of Plaid Cymru has asked me about this, because only today I received a press release from Helen Mary Jones, in which she describes herself as the Llanelli-based Assembly Member. She complains about money spent on a hospital in Carmarthen instead of one in Llanelli. However, as a list Member, she represents both areas, and is the Member for Mid and West Wales. Yet again, a member of Plaid Cymru has been caught red-handed. Of all the parts of the list area that she represents, she targets the one place where she narrowly lost last time, and describes herself as the Llanelli-based Assembly Member. The Bill will stop her describing herself as the Assembly Member for Llanelli in future, because she was defeated there by Catherine Thomas in 2003.

Elfyn Llwyd: Surely the right hon. Gentleman understands that Helen Mary Jones is saying that she is Llanelli-based. She lives thereshe does not say that she is the Member for Llanelli. If that were the case, he would have ground for complaint. Perhaps more importantly, the right hon. Gentleman says that the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) may be addressed by standing orders in the National Assembly. Will he oversee those orders, or will he allow the Assembly to deal with them itself?

Peter Hain: The standing orders will be drawn up by the National Assembly itself. In his party's interests, may I discourage the hon. Gentleman from making such interventions, as he has provoked me to produce even more evidence? I have it on good authority from my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) that Helen Mary Jones lives in his constituency and is one of his constituents. We have a leaked memorandum[Interruption.] I can see Plaid Cymru Members writhing

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman, but we must not have continual sedentary interventions. That applies across the House. There is a long list of Members who wish to speak in the debate, and they may be sacrificing their chances of being called.

Peter Hain: I will take that as an instruction to make progress, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	It is significant, however, that Plaid Cymru Members are writhing in embarrassment, along with many other Opposition Members. I am not surprised, given the statement made in a memorandum by Leanne Wood, another Assembly Member. I could read out the entire statement, but I am pressed for time.

Chris Ruane: Go on.

Peter Hain: My hon. Friend may wish to know that, yet again, a member of Plaid Cymru has been caught red- handed, and advocates the targeting of Assembly office budgets in target seats. She says that her party's list Members will only do case work where it will benefit Plaid Cymru in those seats and will only attend civic and other events in the constituency if they think that there are votes in it. What a terrible advertisement for a Plaid Cymru Assembly Member.
	The comments and evidence that I have cited demonstrate that the claim that the measure is partisan is entirely without foundation. I shall explain why. I remind the House that there are six Labour Assembly Members, including three Ministers, who would be defeated by a swing of 3 per cent. against thema very small swing. They will no longer have the safety net of the regional list. This reform will affect Labour candidates, just as it applies to candidates of other parties. Candidates must make their choice, then the voters will make theirs.
	The Bill marks an important step forward for the Assembly and an important step forward for Wales. I therefore hope that it will command broad cross-party support as it goes through both Houses. We all have our different views on which party should be in power in Cardiff bay, but we should all be able to unite to ensure that the Assembly works effectively as a democratically elected body for the good of Wales. There should be a cross-party consensus on putting Wales first.
	I was encouraged when the new Leader of the Opposition said that he wanted to make a break from past Tory opposition to devolution and instead make it work for the people of Wales. He told The Western Mail that the Tories would no longer pursue the option of a referendum to abolish the Assembly. I had hoped, therefore, that the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham would adopt a similarly constructive approach to devolution and abandon the anti-Welsh and anti-Assembly stance of her predecessor as shadow Secretary of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin). However, it is hard to see how the new consensus approach to Wales signalled by the Leader of the Opposition fits with the reasoned amendment tabled in his name and that of the hon. Lady, which seeks to block even a modest extension of powers to the Assembly by a ridiculous and ritualistic demand for a referendum.
	The idea that the people of Wales would be galvanised by a referendum on the Assembly being authorised to legislate via parliamentary Orders in Council in future, rather than by parliamentary Bills as now, is absurd. What on earth would the question be? Even more to the point, what would the turnout be? The amendment calls for a referendum on enhanced legislative powers for the Assembly. Perhaps she could tell the House how she would campaign in such a referendumfor or against? Does she agree with Nick Bourne, her party's leader in the Assembly, who said that
	all parties agree the present situation is not sustainable in the long term?
	If the hon. Lady continues to pursue her opposition to even these modest additional powers for Wales, she will have squandered an historic opportunity to redefine the position of the Conservative party in Wales. Instead of consigning to the past the Tories' reputation as an anti-devolution party, she will have cemented it. A referendum is called for when the 1997 settlement is fundamentally changed, as the Bill proposes with regard to primary powers. There is no case at all for a referendum that merely adapts the current settlement, with Parliament remaining in charge, as has been the case so far. What she is recommending is a recipe for obstruction and paralysis. It is nothing more than another Tory attempt to thwart the development of the Assembly.
	The Bill represents a crucial test for the Welsh Conservatives and they have already failed it. It is in the national interest of Wales for all parties to bury the arguments of the past and accept that the Assembly is here to stay, and to concentrate instead on making devolution work better. Instead, the Tories have stuck by their rejectionist policies of the past. So much for the Leader of the Opposition's new consensus approach to policy-making. It clearly excludes Wales.
	Wales will have to move on without the Tories, and today we begin to do that, in a new dawn for devolution like that famous one in September 1997. Wales has made great progress over the past eight years. We now have the opportunity to settle for a long time the constitutional status of Wales, first by devolving further powers to the Assembly, and secondly by the prospect of primary powers at some time in the future, if the people of Wales vote for that option in a referendum. By equipping the Assembly to face the challenges of the 21st century, we will help to achieve our objective of a Wales that is world-class, both economically competitive and with high quality public services. For the good of the people of Wales, I call on all parties in the House to support the Bill.

Cheryl Gillan: I beg to move,
	That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Government of Wales Bill because there has been inadequate consultation about the electoral arrangements proposed in the Bill; and because the Bill fails to provide for a referendum on the introduction of the Orders in Council mechanisms for conferring enhanced legislative powers on the National Assembly for Wales.
	I join the Secretary of State in the tributes paid to Merlyn Rees and to Lord Stratford. In Merlyn Rees we have lost a man who was admired across all parts of the political spectrum, and in Lord Stratford we have lost a parliamentarian who gave us much pleasure and amusement over the years while pursuing some very serious policies in which he believed.
	I also welcome the Secretary of State's ordering an investigation into the tragic deaths of Maurice Broadbent, David Horrocks, Wayne Wilkes and 14-year-old Thomas Harland. It seems that valuable lives have been wasted in a tragic accident, and I shall carefully consider the outcome of any investigation.
	I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his generous welcome to my new post. He began by trying to misrepresent my position, but I hope that I can put the record straight in the course of my brief remarks about the Bill and disabuse people about the position in which the right hon. Gentleman has sought to place me, my hon. Friends and my party.

Albert Owen: Will the hon. Lady be as clear with the House as her predecessor, who favoured a referendum on abolishing the National Assembly for Wales?

Cheryl Gillan: The hon. Gentleman's extraordinary intervention is premature. If he contains his enthusiasm, I will set out my party's position.
	I am grateful to the Secretary of State for setting out the Bill's context and main provisions. The legislation is highly significant not only for the future governance of Wales, but for the constitutional position of the United Kingdom as a whole. Under my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), the Conservative party is a party of localism and devolution. On his first visit to Wales as Leader of the Opposition just before Christmas, my right hon. Friend made it clear that devolution and the National Assembly are now established features of the Welsh political landscape. I hope that the Secretary of State will resist the temptation to revisit past battles over devolution and misrepresent our position. A future Conservative Government will seek a constructive relationship with the Assembly, whichever party or parties form the Welsh Assembly Government. We do not, however, believe that the Assembly discharges its functions in every respect either effectively or efficiently, which is something that we will seek to remedy.

Lembit �pik: Although I am impressed by Conservative Front Benchers' apparent change of heart, will the hon. Lady describe what sanctions exist to punish errant young chaps on the Conservative Back Benches[Interruption.] sorry; I meant to say honourable young chapswho have on occasion described the Assembly as a waste of space that should be abolished?

Cheryl Gillan: I would have expected the hon. Gentleman to look forwards rather than backwards, because he will run for office in his party at some stage. If he does not run for office, perhaps he will run to become president of the Liberal Democrats. [Interruption.] Conservatives are always ahead of the game. I shall keep looking forwards and seek not to be drawn into old arguments.
	The debate is about the future structure and powers of the Assembly to allow it to perform what all hon. Members agree is its primary functiondelivering a better quality of life for people in Wales. We can also agree on some of the changes that will result from the Bill, if it becomes law. I have made it clear to the Secretary of State in private meetings outside this House and in my interventions today that the Opposition believe that the Bill contains some good elements as well as some unacceptable elements.
	First, let me set out the areas where we are supportive of the Bill. The decision formally to separate the Executive and legislative arms of the National Assembly is long overdue. There is almost unanimous agreement that the existing corporate Assembly structure has created confusion and misunderstanding as to where real power and decision making lie. That view was endorsed by the Richard commission, the Government's own White Paper in June, and most recently by the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs. From the outset, the Assembly has evolved beyond the limits of the Government of Wales Act 1998 so that there is now a much clearer separation between the Assembly Government and other Assembly Members. That should be recognised.
	In February 2002, the Assembly agreed unanimously on as clear as possible a separation between the work of its executive and legislative arms. In response to Richard, it called for legislation to bring about a formal separation. We broadly believe that the proposals in part 2 are a step in the right direction, but we hope to look at the detail of their implementation in Committee. According to the Secretary of State's programme motion, he intends to allow three days on the Floor of the House for the Committee stage and two days on Report and Third Reading. We will support that.
	If that were all that the Bill set out to do, we would have no hesitation in supporting it on Second Reading, but regrettably that is not the case. For the reasons set out in our much-criticised reasoned amendment, I invite right hon. and hon. Members to support our position by joining us in the Lobby tonight.

Wayne David: So that we have absolute clarity on the hon. Lady's exact position, will she say whether she agrees with the hon. Members for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies), for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones) and for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) that health service powers should be taken from the Assembly and brought back to Westminster?

Cheryl Gillan: The hon. Gentleman will not take me down that route. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) may well laugh. It would perfectly suit the purposes of Labour Members to rerun old battles and take the focus away from the Bill, but I intend to discuss its provisions and ensure that people understand exactly what they mean.

Peter Hain: The point is that the three Welsh Members sitting behind the hon. Lady have advocated returning health service powers to Westminster. Does she agree with her three musketeers, or not?

Cheryl Gillan: Before you rule the Secretary of State out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I suggest that his real problem is that there are three Welsh Conservative Members of Parliament, as well as Conservative Members in the Assembly. If Labour Assembly Members had the same reputation for hard work as our Conservative MPs and AMs, they would do extremely well.
	The Bill suffers from two fatal flaws. First, there is a lack of any proper consultation with the people of Wales through a referendum on the implications of the changes in part 3. Our argument is not that the Assembly should not gain additional powers but that, consistent with our approach to devolution, we need to give the people of Wales their say. We need to give them the opportunity to understand the proposals in the Bill and to express their views on what they want. However, although the Government are prepared to concede a referendum, at some point in the future, on the primary law-making powers set out in part 4, they do not provide for one on the new legislative procedures in part 3. That is inconsistent and wrong, and we will seek to persuade the Secretary of State to provide for an earlier referendum on the proposals for the two-stage process. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) says that I should not waste too much time doing that. In the spirit of consensus, however, I am going to try to make the Secretary of State see sense. He has described the procedures in part 3 as a mechanism to streamline or fast-track Welsh legislation. In fact, they represent a fundamental change to the 1998 settlement, not least evidenced by the extent of the repeals in the last schedule to the Bill.
	The Government are proposing, without asking the people of Wales, to substitute the detailed scrutiny that Parliament gives to Welsh primary legislation with a procedure by which legislative competence is transferred to the Assembly through unamendable Orders in Council following a debate for one and a half hours. That procedure risks disfranchising Welsh Members of Parliament, who will no longer be able to carry out the job of work for which their constituents send them here, and at the same time it will disfranchise the Welsh electors who returned Members to this House in the expectation that they would represent their interests by properly scrutinising legislationa function that will be diminished if the Bill is passed in its present form. It also risks placing the Assembly and Parliament on a clear constitutional collision course.
	No convincing answers have so far been given to legitimate concerns over what would happen if Westminster rejects an application by the Assembly to legislate in a certain area or what would happen if the Secretary of State uses his pro-consular powers to block an application. If the Government envisage that the role of Parliament is simply to rubber-stamp applications, why involve us at all? Why should we go through that interim process and not go straight for full legislative powers? It is little wonder that Lord Richard concluded that
	There is very considerable lack of clarity in the way in which this interim stage would be managed and effected.
	The Secretary of State has said that the interim stage would be a test of the robustness of the devolution settlement. The people of Wales and this Parliament deserve better than that.
	We are entitled to ask where the demand for the proposed procedure has come from. The Secretary of State says that it will mean that Wales will no longer have to jostle each year to get legislation into the Queen's Speech. If that is so, it would be useful for the House to know precisely how many requests for pressing pieces of legislation have been made by the Assembly that the Government have turned down.

Peter Hain: I am happy to say to the hon. Lady, as she has asked me, that there are a number of outstanding bids for legislation that the Assembly would have liked to have got on to the statute book. Actually, we have done quite well; we have two extra Bills this year, besides this one. She has invited me to clarify a point that is likely to arise in future. As I explained in some detail, there is a process of pre-scrutiny in which every Member of the Housenot just Welsh Memberscan take part. Such matters will not be rushed through in an hour and a half debate. There will be proper pre-scrutiny during which orders can be amended appropriately.

Cheryl Gillan: I do not think that the Secretary of State understands. He told us that the precise nature of pre-legislative parliamentary scrutiny will not be laid down in the Bill and will be subject to his whim and desires later. We do not have the detail.

Peter Hain: As a Cabinet Minister, I cannot determine the House's proceduresand nor should I. That is a matter for the House. I have asked the Welsh Affairs Committee, which has come up with some interesting ideas, to be the fulcrum for the pre-legislative scrutiny process, but that is for the House to determine. It is entirely inappropriate for that process to be set out in the Bill, as I am sure on reflection the hon. Lady will agree.

Cheryl Gillan: The point is that it is pre-legislative scrutiny. We will not have the document; it could change. It was the right hon. Gentleman, I believe, who said that he did not think that the Orders in Council would trouble the legislative programme to any great extent:
	It is an hour-and-a-half debate on the floor of the House compared with going through all the stages of . . . legislation.
	He is damned by his own words in showing that there will be a downgrading of the role of the House. There was no demand for such a move. It was not proposed by Lord Richard. No other party has put it forward. It is simply a compromise to try to keep the anti-devolution and pro-devolution wings of the Labour party together, although in the long run I suspect that it will satisfy neither.
	There is a straightforward solution. If the Secretary of State is so confident that this move is right for the people of Wales, he should let them have their say. Instead, he is offering the people of Wales a referendum on proposals in the Bill on which he admits that there is no consensus, which he does not expect to call for many yearsall because, in his own words,
	Rhodri
	the First Minister
	and I and Welsh Labour are not in the business of calling referendums we are going to lose.
	That is the honest truth of the matter. We have proceeded from a pre-legislative referendum in 1997 to a post-legislative referendum in the Bill.

Ian Lucas: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Cheryl Gillan: I want to make a little progress. I will let the hon. Gentleman know when I am going to give way to him.
	No matter what the Secretary of State says, the changes in part 3 are not minor matters. They fundamentally alter the relationship between Parliament and the Assembly, and the people of Wales should be given a vote on them. Now I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Ian Lucas: I thank the hon. Lady and welcome her to her post.
	The people of Wales did have a vote, in May 2005, when they returned 29 Labour Members of Parliament in Wales. In the manifesto on which we all stood, we made clear that we would present proposals for the Assembly to be given enhanced legislative powers. There have been occasions on which I have been less than enthusiastic about more powers for the Assembly, but that was the manifesto on which I stood. Does the hon. Lady believe that that carries any weight at all?

Cheryl Gillan: I think that the hon. Gentleman will be the first to volunteer to give up his seat in the House so that there can be more Welsh Assembly Members, should more powers be devolved to the Assembly.
	The detail in the hon. Gentleman's manifesto simply is not there. Orders in Council were certainly not envisaged at that stage. It is a clever idea, but it is a Johnny-come-lately idea. If it is such a marvellous idea, what is the problem with giving the people of Wales a vote on it?

Huw Irranca-Davies: I have already welcomed the hon. Lady to Wales and to our debate. Does she agree that one of the great successes of the last couple of years is the quality and extent of pre-legislative scrutiny applying to Wales? She is new to her post, but if she does agree, does she consider such scrutiny to be a good model to apply in this instance?

Cheryl Gillan: It is not a question of the merits or otherwise of pre-legislative scrutiny. It is a question of what is proposed in the Bill, and what is currently proposed in it is singularly unclear. We shall seek clarification throughout the Committee stage, and we shall re-examine these very points. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join me in examining the detail that we trust the Secretary of State will provide. Orders in Council were not envisaged in the Richard report, and have caused a great deal of consternation not just in this House but in another place, and it is important for us to be allowed three days of scrutiny on the Floor of the House.
	The second major flaw in the Bill is the blatant alteration of the electoral system in part 1 to favour the Welsh Labour party.

Chris Bryant: May I say something before the hon. Lady leaves the subject of powers? She will know that differences of view between the Assembly and Westminster are reconciled through the judicial committee of the Privy Councilwhich, as I am sure she will agree, is not the most open and transparent body in the British constitution. Can she suggest a way in which the process might be changed in the future?

Cheryl Gillan: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for treating me as if I were in the Government. Perhaps he would like to ask me that question if I were Secretary of State for Wales, but I think that it should be put to the current Secretary of State.
	At the moment, I am convinced that our problems with the legislation are summed up by what the right hon. Gentleman said on 10 December. He said
	you could get on with the job in the meantime and give substantial powers, as Rhodri said, to the Assembly through Orders in Council between 2007 and 2011.
	That is what we must examine. It is a way of passingalmosta concealed grant of direct legislative competence to Cardiff, and we need to examine it in detail. However, I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to answer the hon. Gentleman's question, as he is currently the Secretary of State.

Chris Bryant: The hon. Lady just does not know.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must keep quiet.

Cheryl Gillan: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	The proposed rigging of the electoral system will, despite the protestations of the Secretary of State, prevent candidates who stand in one of the 40 single Member constituencies and who fail to be elected from also standing on the regional top-up lists in any of the regional constituency areas.

Nia Griffith: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Cheryl Gillan: Let me make a little progress, please.
	The prime motivation for this appears to be the political interests of the Labour party in Wales. The Secretary of State and the First Minister have both said that, in respect of full law-making powers, we have to wait for the consensus. That is fine, but clearly there is no consensus whatever for the proposed change to the electoral system.

Wayne David: It was in the manifesto.

Cheryl Gillan: I do not believe that the changes to the electoral system for all elections throughout the UK were featured in the manifesto. Or did it apply only to Wales? This is an issue on which the Welsh Affairs Committee divided on party lines.

Peter Hain: It was in the Welsh manifesto.

Cheryl Gillan: It may have been in the Welsh manifesto, but it was not in the Scottish Parliament and London Assembly manifestos.
	The Electoral Reform Society has spoken out about its profound doubts on this change, saying:
	There is no evidence at all to back up this proposal and therefore we come to the conclusion that we do not think that the case for change has been made.
	The commission also made the point that such a change needed to be considered in a UK rather than just a Welsh context. Perhaps the Secretary of State could tell the House when he expects his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland to adopt the same procedures for elections to the Scottish Parliament. Why did such changes not form part of the Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004?

Peter Hain: As the hon. Lady has raised the issue, I shall tell her that the measure appeared in the UK manifesto. A more extensive description appeared in the Welsh manifesto, but the specific commitment appeared in Labour's UK manifesto, which was fought on by every candidate throughout the UK.

Cheryl Gillan: Does that mean that the Government will apply the measure to Scotland, in which case why did it not form part of the Labour party's representation to the Arbuthnot commission? If it is a principle, which the Secretary of State has said it is, it should apply right across the UK.
	The truth is that this is a spiteful and anti-democratic measure that should have no place in a Government of Wales Bill and may not even survive achallenge under human rights legislation. In December, the Secretary of State boldly asserted that, in his view, the Bill would settle the constitutional question in Wales. In his own words:
	What I hope this will do is settle for a generationif not morethe whole constitutional obsession we have in Wales about the powers and status of the Assembly.
	He knows that the Bill as drafted will do no such thing. Rather than settle the constitutional question, it simply leaves it wide open.
	The Bill offers little prospect of long-term constitutional stability. It proposes a hybrid system of enhanced legislative powers that weakens Parliament and the role of Welsh MPs, while fundamentally changing the 1998 devolution settlement without giving the people of Wales a vote or a voice. Further, it seeks to rig the electoral system to the partisan advantage of the Labour Party.
	If the Government thought that the time has come to make further devolution to Wales, the honest way of going about it would be to consult the people of Wales now, through a referendum, and not wait until some intermediate point along the path, by which time important changes will have been introduced under the guise of this Bill. The Secretary of State had the opportunity to improve the operations of the Assembly simply by separating the Assembly Government from the Assembly Members. Instead, I am afraid that he has chosen to pursue his political interests at the same time, jeopardising the legislation and compromising the people of Wales by adding provisions for partisan, party purposes. I am sorry that he has made that choice.
	We have had no choice but to table a reasoned amendment, and I ask the House to support it in the Lobby tonight. I will not vote against Second Reading if a vote is called because there are elements of the Bill that we Conservatives support, but because the Secretary of State has chosen to include partisan, party proposals, I had no choice but to table a reasoned amendment and to include it in the Order Paper. I ask my hon. Friends to vote with me on it.

Alan Williams: Given that many Members want to speak in this debate, and that I intend to construct my contribution around a series of questions, may I suggest to the Secretary of State that he resists the temptation to try to answer them as we go along? I am happy to wait and to hear his answershopefullyin the winding-up speech.
	The Secretary of State may be a little surprised to hear me start with a welcome, albeit a limited one, for the introduction of a referendum process, which is at least preferable to what was proposed by the Richard commission. What worries me is that the Bill as drafted allows for repeated referendums, until a majority of at least one is eventually achieved. That could conceivably be open to exploitation for political expediencythere could be a campaign of attrition until a majority is won. So why has the Secretary of State ignored the recommendation of the Welsh Affairs Committee that there be a minimum interval between referendums of at least two terms of the Assembly, which is eight years? Also, why has he ignored the First Minister's observation, in answer to question 226 in the Select Committee's report, that the interval would probably be a minimum of one generation, which is 20 years? Why has he even ignored his own contribution in that same question, in which he said that the proposal
	would be off the agenda for a very long time?
	I must admit that if there were a vote on Second Reading, I would be unable to support the BillI would not actually oppose itbecause of the absence of such a provision.
	Is it technically possibleI emphasise the word technically; I am not asking whether this is the intentionthat under the Bill as drafted, which provides for a succession of orders, the full legislative objective could be achieved without a referendum? As I understand it, it could. It might take a long time, but a succession of orders could achieve that objective. If they could achieve that objectiveI may be wrongwould there be any effect if there were a referendum and it returned a no vote, or would we go back to a system of orders and the inevitable chipping away at the devolution process?
	I am also concerned about what I call the Trojan horse clause. Page 20 of the Wales Office's guide to the Bill points out that if just one non-controversial, innocuous order is passed, a policy area is opened. Once that happens, the Assembly is free to introduce new measures with different policy objectives, without having to go for a further order. It is a form of creeping devolution.
	In view of that, and because that is a result of the order process proposed, it is important that we examine how thorough and efficient are the safeguards provided under the order process, in both the Lords and the Commons. My right hon. Friend knows, as I and every other Member of this House know, that a one and a half hour order cannot be amended. By the time that the Front Bench speeches have finished, there is hardly any time for any alternative opinion. Indeed, by the nature of the House of Commons, it is improbable that the House would be packed with English Members who were gasping to hear the detailed reasons why the order should not be introduced.
	My right hon. Friend said that the answer would be in the draft Bill. I am a great enthusiast, as is the Liaison Committee which I chair, for the draft Bill process, but it is clear constitutionally that the draft Bill process recommendations are not binding on the Secretary of State. It is up to his whim whether he accepts them. I do not disagree that the Bill is a fair representation of his opinions but, as he told the Committee, he is an enthusiastic supporter of devolution of the full legislative process. We are therefore left with some scepticism about the effectiveness of the draft process.
	In addition, I agree with my right hon. Friend that it is up to the House to decide the form of draft Committee. I can see the case for a Joint Committee between the House and the Assembly, as has happened on other issues. However, as I shall suggest to the Liaison Committee, another element is necessary, otherwise the two groups that make up the Select Committee would both be predominantly in favour of devolution going as far as possible. Therefore, the Joint Committee needs an element that would look after the interests of the House of Commons and consider the constitutional impact of the propositions outside Wales. My colleagues on the Liaison Committee and I will consider the possibility of the Constitutional Affairs Committee also being represented.
	Now we come to the Lords end. As I understand the evidence that my right hon. Friend gave to the Select Committee, he clearly envisages that what is in effect the Parliament Act process would apply if the Lords rejected the order. So we have a process in the Commons that will be meaningless and a whipped majority will drift the provisions through. In the Lords, my right hon. Friend has cut the legs from under what is intended as a process of scrutiny on behalf of Parliament. It would be interesting to hear my right hon. Friend's evidence on whether the Parliament Act would be appropriate. The propositions before us certainly appeared in the White Paper that was published in June, after the election. They were embodied in a Bill that appeared six months after the election, in December.
	My right hon. Friend says that there was pre-election consultation but, as far as we can gather, that consultation was on the Richard commission, which the Bill and the White Paper effectively reject. My right hon. Friend was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, South (Mr. Jones), in question 195:
	Have the people of Wales ever been consulted over the Order in Council procedure?
	That is not in Richard, which was part of the consultation; it is a clear and specific question. My right hon. Friend answered:
	There was a widespread process of consultation following the Richard Commission, in which both Rhodri and I were in exactly the same position, that we wanted to see the Assembly get on with its task of having greater powers following 2007 and did not want to wait another four years, as Richard proposed.
	That is fascinating, but it is less than precise about what consultation there was with the public, so will my right hon. Friend put in the Library all the consultation documents that he released during the election that outline the procedures covered in the Bill?
	I am not surprised that my right hon. Friend suggested 2007, although Richard proposed 2011. Most people are not thinking that far ahead, but I have my retirement to think about and 2011 will be after I have retired, which is not to say that my retirement is relevant, but that the process would take place after the general election. The measure is an insurance policya just-in-case provision. While a Labour Government are in office my right hon. Friend wants to get as much slammed through under the order process as he can get away with.

Cheryl Gillan: I agree with much of what the right hon. Gentleman says. Is it not fair to say that as the First Minister plans to retire in 2009, the measure could be an attempt to put on the statute book something that will act as a memorial and a tribute both to the Secretary of State, as he moves on and a Conservative Government take over, and to the First Minister in Wales? It would grant more powers to the Assembly by the back door.

Alan Williams: That suggests a degree of egocentricity on the part of my right hon. Friend that no one would associate with him. In fact, he has introduced a salami-slicing provisiona series of orders that one by one will chip away at the powers of the House and give them to the Assembly. We are still not clear what the consultation was about.
	I conclude on a point that has been touched on and which is profoundly important. The House of Commons is sleepwalking and does not quite understand what the devolution process is about, and I suspect that many of my English colleagues have not understood what it might mean for them. Scotland already has its devolution. As Wales spreads its devolutionary catchment, increasingly larger parts of the legislation going through the House of Commons will be England-only. It will not apply in Wales or in Scotland.
	I abstained on tuition charges because I felt that I should not vote on them, but we have an anomalous situation whereby Scottish and Welsh Members, who are not answerable to English constituencies, will vote to impose on them measures that will not apply in Scotland or Wales. That affronts my concept of the democratic accountability that I thought existed in our country.
	In the atmosphere that has been partially created by the act of devolutionmaking the Welsh more Welsh and the Scots more Scottishthere is a seeping effect of making the English more English. I suspect that there is a limit to how long the English electorate will put up with a situation where Welsh and Scottish votes determine what they get, especially if there was a Government with an overall UK majority but only a minority of votes in England. I do not think that the Government have even considered the possible repercussions for my party in the future, when the English rumble the effect of what we are putting through the House. There will be a backlash, and at some stage the issue and the policy will come back to bite us.

Lembit �pik: I welcome the   hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) to her new Front-Bench role on Welsh matters. The early indications are that she will, indeed, be truly inclusive and take a positive approach. That will certainly endear her to her three Conservative Members from Wales.
	I also pay tribute to Merlyn Rees, who made a tremendous contribution to Northern Ireland affairshe will be considerably missed in the other place, where he was active until Decemberand to Tony Banks, with whom I had considerable interactions, particularly on the vexatious issue of fox hunting. Irrespective of whether I agreed with him, I think that the House can agree that he made a difference and left an indelible mark on parliamentary matters, and to that extent, British politics will be worse off without him.
	I apologise to the House on account of the fact that, on this occasion, I may have to be a little rude and leave at about four minutes to 6, as I am chairing an important meeting concerning the local difficulties facing my party. Although I pay tribute, as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, to the loyalty of my hon. Friends the Members for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams), for Cardiff, Central (Jenny Willott) and for Ceredigion (Mark Williams), I recognise that my absence may give them the opportunity to call for my   resignation. I intend to fight on and consider my position to be tenable.
	The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham suggested that I was standing for the presidency of my party. I can tell her that no vacancy currently exists for the presidency. However, if called upon to serve humanity in that way, I may allow my name to go forward. I thank the hon. Lady for her offer of support.
	As is the fashion at the moment among young Opposition MPs, it is necessary to pay tribute to the Government. Labour deserve some credit for grasping the nettle in 1998 and kick-starting the devolution process in 1997. The Bill that the Government presented then was a cautious one; it created the Welsh Assembly, but it kept the Assembly's powers firmly in check. In effect, Westminster still ran a large part of the show. The Government now have a mandate to give Wales the deal that it deservesan Assembly with primary powers.
	Polls suggest that the Welsh public support such a move, and all but one of the major parties seem wholly to support moves toward primary powers. The Richard commission set out a clear path for a proper devolution settlement. Having surveyed all the issues in unique detail, Lord Richard and his colleagues concluded that the best way forward for Wales was, first, to create an 80-Member Assembly, with primary law-making powers, elected by a single-transferable-vote system.

Ian Lucas: The hon. Gentleman suggests that the Richard commission gave detailed consideration to relevant matters in Wales. A very important issue for his constituency and mine is the provision of public services from England to Welsh constituents. The Richard commission did not cover that in any detail at allor can he perhaps enlighten me and tell me where in the Richard commission report it was?

Lembit �pik: The hon. Gentleman is right, but in many ways that is a tactical matter. The way in which the Assembly exercises those powers is a strategic question. He and I and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire all have issues about health and other provision across the border, but it is probably more appropriate for us to discuss those specific matters in a debate other than one that deals with these weighty constitutional matters, although the hon. Gentleman may want to discuss that issue in more detail in his own contribution.
	The Richard commission also said that law-making powers would be more effectively dispatched by an 80-Member Assembly. That is the model that Welsh Liberal Democrats want to see put in place. Not only would it create a powerful and professional Welsh senate and a proportional political body with the responsibilities and capacity to move Wales forward, but it would also resolve the issues that the Secretary of State for Wales was trying to grapple with in terms of the frictions that he observes between list Members and constituency Members of the Assembly.
	Unfortunately, the Bill comes nowhere near what Lord Richard advocated and what the Welsh Liberal Democrats and, in my judgment, a very large proportion of the people of Wales would like. In its current form, the Bill is flawed, patronising and limited. Its main problem is that it concentrates great power in the figure of the Secretary of State for Wales and, in doing so, could thrust the devolution process into complete limbo for decades. I give considerable praise to the current Secretary of State, who I believe is genuinely committed to devolution, but there is no guarantee that his successors will share his enthusiasm. In fact, he highlighted a possible risk whereby a Secretary of State for Wales might decide to stamp on the requests of the Assembly and therefore thwart devolution.

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He may agree that it is not a question of whether the Secretary of State decides to stamp on the Assembly. The fact that he has these draconian Executive powers places the Assembly under his administrative tutelage. That is the reality of the arrangement that is being sold to the Welsh people, as though the Assembly were getting a proper legislative function, which it is not.

Lembit �pik: The hon. Gentleman makes an insightful point. Although he and his party may be coming at the issue from a different direction from my party and, I suspect, Plaid Cymru, the inference is nevertheless the same. If the Secretary of State decided not to grant additional powers in the context of the Bill, he or she could literally prevent those powers from being passed.

Peter Hain: That exists now. Under existing procedures, a Secretary of State, myself included, could decide not to introduce a Bill requested by the Assembly. Ironically, the hon. Gentleman and the shadow Attorney-General are endorsing my argument that Parliament remains in charge and that the first stage of a modest increase in powers does not change the settlement at all. That is the reality. If that does not work, a move to primary powers could take place subject to a referendum. That is the point.

Lembit �pik: Although I suspect that it has happened by accident, we violently agree. The Secretary of State appears to be trying to mollify not necessarily those on the Conservative Front Bench but the troublesome trio who sit behind them and who want to be reassured that there is no substantial change to the settlement. However, that does not work for the Liberal Democrats or, I imagine, for Plaid Cymru, as we believe that the Bill presents an opportunity to devolve primary powers in a fashion that is similar to the Scottish model rather than maintaining so much influence in the hands of the Secretary of State for Wales that, ultimately, an anti-devolution Secretary of State could postpone things.

Nigel Evans: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the current settlement was endorsed by the people of Wales in a referendum and that we are now looking to give greater powers to the Welsh Assembly? Irrespective of whether we move to primary powers for which there would be a referendum, does he agree that the people of Wales must be trusted? They voted once for what we have now and they must be allowed to vote again for a change in the settlement.

Lembit �pik: I shall come to the question of referendums shortly.

Kevin Brennan: The hon. Gentleman has not got much time.

Lembit �pik: Very shortly.
	I shall finish on this point. Ironically, the Secretary of State and the Conservatives are trying to resist what the Liberal Democrats wantfor trust to be placed in the Assembly to dispatch primary powers in a fashion similar to the Scottish Parliament and for trust to be placed in the Welsh people, through the electoral process, to elect Assembly Members whom they trust with those responsibilities. As it is at the moment, the Secretary of State's office has the enormous power to run with or kill legislation.
	We have seen the taming of the three Welsh Conservative Members. It is a delight to note the influence that the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham has already had, but I am more than a little surprised by their mouse-like silence. The guns of Monmouth have been silenced, and the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) has been tamed by the new shadow Secretary of State for Wales. However, I suspect that underneath their docile facade, those three hon. Members are still the same people whom we knew and loved before. I would counsel the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) that, as the Liberal Democrats know all too well, a revolution can start with a whisper. If the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham wishes to lead her Back-Bench colleagues through the Lobby, she must explain what the transformation on the road to Damascus has been framed on. If the Conservatives really want to reassure us that they are pro-devolution, they must explain why, as the Secretary of State pointed out, they have tabled a reasoned amendment that would abolish the Bill before it had received its Second Readingthat is the nature of the vote. I have heard the words of the hon. Lady and her boss, but it will take more than words to convince me that there has been such a transformation and that a Conservative Government would be committed to devolution in the way in which I have described.

Cheryl Gillan: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way because the policy line that we are taking is obviously deeply upsetting to him. My three colleagues who represent Welsh constituencies and I are firmly wedded to giving the people of Wales a choice and trusting them. If we have a situation under this legislation in which Cardiff ends up with greater powers while Labour Members in Westminster say that they have not devolved primary legislative powers, we are seeing an act of political prestidigitation from the Secretary of State that would make Paul Daniels look like an amateur. If I can make common cause with the leader of my party and my three colleagues who represent Wales to give the people of Wales a choice, I shall do so. I hope that the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) will agree with me on that.

Lembit �pik: Let us move on to that point. We should remember that the Welsh Affairs Committee was unequivocal in saying that
	the Secretary of State's powers should be limited to refusing Orders in Council on the basis of procedure, and not on the merits of the policy aspiration.
	The Committee did not ask for a referendum. Although the hon. Lady is perfectly entitled to call for a referendum, that is a matter of judgment, and I do not think that it would be appropriate to hold such a referendum.
	It is the same story with the Governmentthis is where I respond to the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans). Lord Richard called the Bill a tortuous route towards primary powers. We think that part of that tortuous route is putting a referendum between us and equivalence with Scotland. Hon. Members who feel that they cannot trust the Welsh Assembly, or trust the Welsh people to elect a competent Assembly, might want to support a referendum, but those of us who think that devolution means exactly that believe that the House has the authority and the duty to give the Welsh Assembly responsibilities comparable with those in Scotland.

Jennifer Willott: My hon. Friend mentioned the Richard commission, the report of which was well researched and clear. Does he agree that it is now the Government's responsibility to explain why they commissioned the work, but completely ignored what was said?

Lembit �pik: As my hon. Friend rightly points out, those in government in Wales commissioned the report. It is interesting to note how quickly Labour Members want to distance themselves from those in government in the Cardiff Assembly. As my hon. Friend says, Lord Richard makes a serious and insightful contribution to devolution. The document shows that if an anti-devolution party were to come to power in Westminster, it could halt the devolution process indefinitely. Under the Bill, the scenario could occur whereby 90 per cent. of the Welsh public and 90 per cent. of the Assembly Members want primary powers and the Secretary of State could simply say no. Lord Richard was right to highlight the dangers, as is my hon. Friend.
	The Bill was meant to tip the balance of power from Westminster to Cardiff, but instead it strengthens the Secretary of State's grip. On Orders in Council, primary powers and future referendums, he holds all the aces. The Welsh Assembly has to pull off a five-card trick to guarantee that it will get anywhere at all. If Labour were really pro-devolution, would it present us with this convoluted process, riddled with caveats and clauses, which could threaten the whole devolution process? At best, the impression is one of compromise. It seems as though the Government have conceded considerable ground to their own anti-devolution elements.
	That perhaps explains the evident friction between what Labour Ministers say in this House and what Labour Assembly Members say at the other end of the M4, in Cardiff. That transparently seems to be the case on the issue of dual candidacy, on which there is commonality among all the Opposition parties. The issue has attracted considerable attention and will, I am sure, be discussed in Committee. Labour's policy of banning dual candidacy does not put our Secretary of State on quite the same moral level as Robert Mugabe, as somebody suggested, but there is little evidence that the measure is anything other than politically motivated.
	Academics and non-partisan organisations, such as the Electoral Reform Society and the Electoral Commission, have all condemned the Government's proposals. Such people have found no evidence that dual candidacy, in the words of the Secretary of State,
	devalues the integrity of the electoral system
	or
	acts as a disincentive to voting in constituency elections[Official Report, 15 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 264.]

Mark Tami: Would the hon. Gentleman describe the Electoral Reform Society as a non-partisan organisation or does he think that it has a certain agenda to pursue?

Lembit �pik: Anybody who believes themselves to be a democrat and to be passionate about free speech will view that organisation as independent. Hon. Members can draw their own conclusions.

Nigel Evans: The hon. Gentleman has just referred to himself as a democrat, so I must drag him back to the issue of giving the people of Wales a choice. Had it been left up to him, the people of the north-east would have had their regional tier of government. The fact is that they were given a referendum and they voted overwhelmingly against. What is he afraid of? Let us give the people a choice.

Lembit �pik: As I said, the Liberal Democrats feel that, in essence, the Welsh Assembly deserves the same powers as the Scottish Parliament. We asked the people in Wales and we doubled the number of seats in Parliament. We increased our share of the vote and we anticipate that we will do well in the Welsh Assembly elections. Let us not dwell on the matter, which is a matter of judgment; the Liberal Democrats and, I suspect, Plaid Cymru believe that we do not need a referendum to move forward.
	The main issue on the Bill is devolution and the extent of the powers available to the Welsh Assembly. We have an historic opportunity to give Wales what it deserves: a proper law-making senate, just like the Scottish Parliament. If Labour had followed the Richard commission, we would be much closer to having that, but it has categorically failed to do so.
	The Bill nevertheless offers potential. With finance, there is a great opportunity finally to end the injustice of the Barnett formula and to replace it with something fairer. We can change that situation if we choose to do so, through our dialogues in the Committee sittings, as set out in the programme motion, with which we agree. We can talk about the other details and elements by passing the Bill on Second Reading and seeking to amend it. In so doing, and in opposing the reasoned amendment because we feel it is anti-devolutionary, we must also be honest. The Government have an obligation to listen. Today, we shall support the Bill on the understanding that they will take feedback on the elements that are unsatisfactory and that can be improved upon in the interests of Wales. It will not be good enough if every Opposition amendment is simply defeated on the basis that the Government do not like to accept Opposition amendments and believe doing so to be weak.
	We have major reservations about the Bill and major amendments to table in Committee. If they are taken on board, we will vote for the Bill to become law. If they are not, we will find it difficult to back a Bill that could set back the devolution process for 20 or 30 years. We believe that this Secretary of State is pro-devolution and that he has the opportunity to deliver to Wales what it requires. He can be a hero in the eyes of the Welsh. I hope that he does not sit on his hands and, by default, become a villain.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: May I say to hon. Members that no time limit was imposed on speeches by Back Benchers, but there is a long list of those wishing to speak in the remaining time available. If all hon. Members present are to make a contribution, 10 minutes would be a guide.

Paul Murphy: I join in the comments made by Members of the House about Tony Banks and particularly, from a Welsh point of view, about Merlyn Rees. He was a Cilfynydd boy, and a distinguished Home Secretary and Northern Ireland Secretary. We will miss them both.
	I also warmly welcome the new shadow Secretary of State for Wales to her post. I know that Wales has a special place in her heart and we wish her well in her new job. I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and the First Minister for the enormous amount of work that they have put into the Bill and the arrangements before Parliament over the past months and years. The result of those efforts will be seen in the weeks ahead.
	In 1979, my constituency of Torfaen voted overwhelmingly against devolution, and I was one of those who voted against. That was the case among most of the valley constituencies in south Wales and most of Wales itself. Some 20 years later, my constituency continued to vote against devolution, but it did so with the tiniest of majorities. I am unsure what it would do today were there a referendum on the issue, but I believe that it would probably vote in favour. There are two reasons for that.
	The first, inevitably, is that the difference between 1979 and 1997 was nearly two decades of Conservative Government. In a country such as Wales, which overwhelmingly votes Labour, people felt that they needed the change. The second reason, which has not been touched on tremendously this evening but I am sure will be in the debates to follow, is that devolution is not about high constitutional principles but about how services are delivered to the people whom we represent.
	That is the basis of devolution: do people get better health services, schools, planning or local government? It is not only about whether services improve in quality but about whether government is accessible and more accountable to people. To a large extent, accessibility is the one area that my constituents would regard as having changed during all those years.
	I am not saying for one second that improvements are not necessary in service delivery in Walesof course they are, as in the rest of the United Kingdom. However, people now understand that the Assembly exists to deliver the services so that people's lives can be improved. Does the Bill change that in any way? That is the question that we must consider on Second Reading and in Committee. The change in relation to the separation of powers is very important because the Assembly's corporate status simply has not worked and needs to be changed.
	I was confused by the Conservative party's reasoned amendment. I am in favour of such amendments when they mean something, but this one means that the Opposition are inviting this House to turn down completely the Second Reading of the Bill. There is ample opportunity in Committee, on Report and in the other place to deal with the important issues. To reject the entire Bill on such a basis is wrong and is, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, bizarre.
	The changes that will result from the Orders-in-Council provision are necessary. They are not especially dramatic and they will improve service delivery. In the past, including when I was Secretary of State, we transferred powers to the Assembly on several occasions. Fire services are an obvious example: they come under local government in England and should in Wales as well. There are other examples, including animal welfare, in which services or functions were devolved to the Assembly because it made sense so to do. The Order-in-Council procedure enhancing the legislative competence of the Assembly will make sense where the Assembly has responsibility.
	I am a little doubtfulI agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), the Father of the Houseabout the way in which Parliament will deal with scrutiny in that Order-in-Council process. I am not convinced that we have got that right yet. As Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my right hon. Friend knows that the Order-in-Council provision, which is used to legislate while there is direct rule for Northern Ireland, does not allow for amendments to be made to legislation and that there is a limit of one and a half hours for debate. I know that putting on the face of the Bill improvements to our method of scrutiny would be a problem, but Parliament and the Government ought to consider in more detail how the process could be improved. Pre-legislative scrutiny, working with the Assembly Committees and extending the time for debate on Orders in Council will all be necessary, of course, but I hope that my right hon. Friend will also take on board the suggestions that I am sure will be made in Committee.
	I do not think that a referendum is needed on the Orders-in-Council provision, and I certainly do not believe that one is needed on whether to allow dual candidacy. A referendum will be needed if primary powers are to be given to the Welsh Assembly, because that would fundamentally change the settlement on which we agreed back in 1997.
	There might be a case in years to come for holding another referendum, on the way in which we elect Members to the National Assembly for Wales. The present system is confusing to our electors, and if an electoral system confuses the electors, it is not a good electoral system. I would prefer to have two-Member constituencies using an alternative vote system. That is what I argued for in the mid-1990s, but it did not happen. I doubt that it would be acceptable now, but it remains my preference. I would like to see a first-past-the-post system, but I do not think that that is likely to happen because it would fundamentally change the system on which people voted. If we want fundamentally to change the electoral system, there is a case for giving people the right to vote on that, because that would be meaningful.
	The change in respect of dual candidacy is necessary. I do not think for one second that it would give any party an advantage. Different parties might have different rules on who should stand for what, but in terms of who is eventually elected, it will make no difference. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, six of our Labour colleagues in the Assembly could face defeat on the smallest of swings, but will not have the safeguard of standing for the top-up list.

David Davies: It will never happen, but a candidate on a list would have a vested interest in ensuring that his colleague standing in a winnable seat did not win. Would not that cause problems to the parties that currently benefit most from regional lists?

Paul Murphy: It is for the individual parties to sort out how they select people for election.
	That is a problem of the system. The additional member system that we have as a result of the 1997 settlement is fundamentally flawed. People do not understand it. They do not understand how an individual can stand in two ways for the same body on the same day in the same election and be defeated, then get elected a matter of an hour or two later. Equally if not more confusing is the fact that, in my constituency and in those of my right hon. and hon. Friends in the south Wales valleys, thousands upon thousands of people vote Labour on their second vote, yet none of those votes is counted. I do not understand the logic of that. I can understand the technicalities, because I taught the subject many years ago when I was a teacher in a college of further education, but as an elector or as an elected representative, I think that it is terribly confusing and ought to be changed.
	How can the system be changed? We should keep the 40 first-past-the-post AMs and the 20 top-up AMs should be elected on an all-Wales list based on strict proportionality, so that people are elected according to the number of votes cast throughout Wales for their party. That would be easily understood by the people of Wales. In the months and years ahead, there is a debate to be had about what changes might be made. If none is made, the top-up system will become increasingly discredited.

Dominic Grieve: The method that the right hon. Gentleman proposes has something to commend it, but if such a system were to be adopted, there would be nothing to prevent the mischief about which the Secretary of State is so exercised, of someone on an all-Wales list identifying himself with a particular locality, which he wanted to seize in future under first past the post. Does not the argument advanced by the Secretary of State debase the debate that we ought to be having on the matter, on which the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) is making an important point?

Paul Murphy: Someone on an all-Wales list standing in a strictly proportionate election going to a particular constituency and fighting it would be much less of a problem than it is now. Now, elections are fought on electoral subdivisions of Wales and in those much smaller divisions it is more than possibleindeed, it is happeningfor individual list Members to go to a constituency and campaign to get elected as a candidate under first past the post. That is wrong, because the 20 top-up Members should bring something different to the Assembly and thus enhance it. That would be more likely if they were elected as I have suggested.
	I hope that the Bill receives its Second Reading today, because the people of Wales are served by all of us who are elected for that purpose, whether we serve in the House of Commons, the Assembly or local government. We are all there to serve those whom we represent and I believe that the Bill gives us an opportunity to improve the quality of life of all Welsh people.

Daniel Kawczynski: I agreed with almost every word that the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) said. He is right to say that the Bill will have long-term ramifications for Anglo-Welsh relations and the way in which our country develops.
	I represent the border town of Shrewsbury. We have a long border with Wales and there are many issues common to Shrewsbury and Shropshire and the good people of Wales. Just last week, the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik), who has now left the Chamber, came to the Royal Shrewsbury hospital in my constituency to fight for the services it provides because the vast majority of his mid-Wales constituents cross the border to use our services.
	The United Kingdom is, in my view, one countryI am passionate about thatbut the Bill and some previous pieces of legislation drive a wedge between England and Wales. When we cross the border, there are no passport checks or barriers, yet Parliament is starting to create huge gulfs between our two peoples. I shall give three or four examples of the way in which barriers are being erected between our two countries.
	The first example is the Royal Shrewsbury hospital. Given the difference in policy of the Welsh Assembly and our authorities, my hospital in Shrewsbury loses more than 2 million every year. That is because the Welsh health authorities pay a different amount for their patients coming across the border compared with English patients. That is repeated over and over again in local newspapers. Shropshire newspapers state that we are subsidising the Welsh and ask why the Welsh should pay less. This is bad for cross-border relations.

Wayne David: What is the hon. Gentleman's policy for resolving that problem, as he sees it?

Daniel Kawczynski: Although I believe in devolution, I believe also that there must be some form of joined-up government. The Welsh Assembly must be thinking along similar lines on certain issues, such as health, when it comes to cross-border services. That should certainly be taken into consideration.
	I move on to targets and hospitals. One of the problems for the Welsh is that, because the Assembly pays less for patients, they have to face far longer targets. If someone is Welsh and he or she comes across the border to use my hospital, they will have to wait far longer for their operation than my constituents wait. Many Welsh citizens say to me that they feel second-class citizens because of the waits that they face, and that they find them entirely unacceptable.
	My constituents are treated differently from Welsh citizens when it comes to prescribing drugs at the Royal Shrewsbury hospital. Some Welsh patients receive drugs that my constituents are not allowed to have, and vice versa. This is appalling. Surely the Labour Government, a Government who talk so passionately about the NHS, should be talking about ensuring that services and drugs for patients are the same at a hospital, no matter where they come from.
	I represent a border town and there are many farmers who own property on both sides of the border. They are frustrated by the differences in single farm payments with which they have to cope. These farmers get together at the Minsterley show every year to talk about how they are being treated in Wales and how they are being treated in England. Division is caused between the two sets of people.
	The Secretary of State talked about accountability. I shall give one example of where the Welsh Assembly is not proving accountable to people in England. There is a major project on the Welsh-English borderthe Middletown bypassthat is being considered by the Welsh Assembly. This huge bypass will come across the border into my constituency, yet it will be adjudicated on by the First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, and the Welsh Assembly. We will have no input. Many acres of Shropshire countryside will be devastated by a huge bypass but we in Shropshire will have no say. We feel, as the Welsh felt in the past, a lack of accountability.
	I shall talk about jobs, about which I feel passionately. Unemployment has increased in my constituency by 25 per cent. over the past 12 months. We have lost many jobs across the border to Wales. Welsh Members may say, That is great. We are doing a better job than you are in attracting jobs. However, we are a united kingdom. We should be focusing on jobs throughout the country and not on poaching jobs from either side of the border on the basis that the Welsh Development Agency gives larger grants.

Ian Lucas: For the hon. Gentleman's information, Wrexham and Alyn and Deeside are not in the objective 1 area and do not receive grant aid, in contrast to areas of Shropshire that receive grant aid under EU regulations.

Daniel Kawczynski: I am talking about the difference between Shrewsbury and Montgomeryshire, which affects Shrewsbury. The hon. Gentleman will have to speak to my counterpart on his side of the border.

Cheryl Gillan: Does my hon. Friend agree that, given the catalogue of issues that need resolving, it would have been an improvement to make the Welsh Assembly work better for the people of Wales and the people of the United Kingdom before the Secretary of State sought to change the way in which it legislates, and that his priorities are completely wrong? Instead of improving things for the people of Wales, he has sought once again to move the goalposts.

Daniel Kawczynski: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She has encapsulated in a far better way than I have the main thrust of my speech, which is that the proposed legislation is moving ahead quickly before certain fundamental issues that affect both our countries are addressed. Unless someone lives in a border area, as I do, he or she may not feel the deep concerns and passions that are felt by myself and by my constituents in respect of anomalous cross-border issues.
	I recently met directors of a large American company who basically admitted to me that they had played us off one against the otherthe Welsh Assembly and the English authoritiesand that they drove up the grants that they demanded. I urge the Secretary of State and the Government to bear in mind the effect that their proposed legislation will have on English areas near the border.

Hywel Francis: I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) on her new appointment. As Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee, I look forward to working with her. I pay tribute too to two great parliamentariansMerlyn Rees, a true son of Cilfynydd, and Tony Banks.
	As Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee, I wish to make a contribution to this important debate on the future government of Wales. On a personal note, I am encouraged by the constructive proposals in the Bill that have the capacity, I believe, to strengthen democracy, policy development and accountability within Wales. As someone who has actively supported democratic devolution for more than three decades in Wales, I am aware of the opportunities and also of some of the dangers swirling around the Bill. Most critically, I am aware of the need for a broad consensus within Wales to support the principles that underpin the proposals.
	The devolution campaign in 197879 paid little real attention to the need for such a consensus; least of all, sad to say, within our own governing party. Even in 1997, a much more propitious time, we must acknowledge, and with barely an organised opposition, the referendum result was perilously close.
	I am reminded of the prophetic words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), who has made an important contribution to tonight's debate, when he was Secretary of State for Wales. He rightly characterised devolution as part of the long historic progress of Welsh and British democracy via the chartist and suffragette movements. Following the 1997 referendum vote, it was he who said, I believe borrowing from the late John Smith, that Welsh devolution was a settled question. It was settled in the sense of no going back because the Welsh people had taken a vital democratic step forward through a referendum. He cautioned that further legitimate progress towards new powers could be made only with a further referendum sometime in the future.
	My Committee considered the proposals contained within the White Paper and made a series of helpful recommendations that I believe will improve the proposed legislation. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said previously that he would be responding in detail to my Committee's recommendations. I look forward to that response and I hope that he will be forthcoming in taking on board all of our recommendations.
	The Government produced a White Paper rather than a draft Bill. That meant that there was insufficient detail for my Committee to consider when it looked at the Government's proposals, but it is an important piece of constitutional legislation for Wales and the Bill should have been submitted for proper pre-legislative scrutiny. We made that point in our report, because such scrutiny would have enabled us as parliamentarians and the wider public to assess properly the Government's intentions. It is regrettable that we could not do so.
	I welcome the fact that the Government have introduced a free-standing Bill, rather than a Bill to amend the Government of Wales Act 1998. However, it represents only part of the solution. If there is to be absolute clarity about what powers rest with Parliament and what powers lie with the Welsh Assembly Government we need a Welsh statute book. Without one, an understanding of where the finer points of authority lie may remain beyond our grasp, so we made a recommendation that one should be established.
	Our report welcomes the separation of the legislature and the Executive. The existing arrangements have bred confusion about the roles of the Welsh Assembly Government and the National Assembly. A formal separation of the two will make it clear to the people of Wales that the Welsh Assembly Government are responsible for policy direction in Wales while the National Assembly is responsible for holding the Government to account.
	We also recommended that the Bill use the term Welsh Executive rather than Welsh Assembly Government. The current terminology reflects the maximum separation possible under the 1998 Act. Now that we have a new Bill, we no longer need the connection that the word Assembly in Welsh Assembly Government implies. The term Welsh Executive removes any connection or confusion with the National Assembly, and reinforces the formal separation between the Executive and the legislature in Cardiff. For that reason, we recommended that Welsh Executive replace Welsh Assembly Government in the Bill.
	The meat of the Bill consists of the Government's proposals to enhance the powers of the National Assembly through the use of Orders in Council. The Government propose that requests for powers in certain areas be approved by Parliament with secondary legislation rather than primary legislation. That would have the benefit of providing Wales with the tools that it needs to pursue its policy aspirations while at the same time preventing legislation from being caught up in the busy timetable of the Government's legislative programme. I appreciate that not everyone is keen on using delegated legislation to confer powers on the National Assembly, as it is possible that draft orders will not receive adequate parliamentary scrutiny. For that reason, our report recommended that draft orders should be considered not in a Standing Committee but on the Floor of the House for one and a half hours. If there was cross-party consensus that a particular draft Order in Council needed a longer debate, we recommend that it should be referred to the Welsh Grand Committee. Furthermore, proposals for draft orders will be subject to detailed pre-legislative scrutiny. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has suggested that there is a role for the Welsh Affairs Committee in such scrutiny.

Cheryl Gillan: I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman's chairmanship of the Committee led it to make certain proposals when it was unsighted about the Secretary of State's view, given the indecent haste with which the Bill was introduced. Does he agree that it would be better, not only if the Government tabled early amendments to the Bill but if they made a timely response to his Committee's recommendations, long before we scrutinise the Bill on the Floor of the House? Otherwise, we will once more be faced with a large raft of legislation and many Government amendments, together with a lack of a response to his Committee's excellent report.

Hywel Francis: In a word, yes. The hon. Lady has anticipated what I was going to say.
	If pre-legislative scrutiny is to be conducted properly, we will need more than just sight of the proposal for a draft order. In addition, the Government must publish a detailed memorandum that sets out precisely the scope of the draft order, the legislative authority that would pass to the National Assembly and the practical legal effects of the proposals on Wales. I was interested in what my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) said about the impact of such measures on the rest of the United Kingdom.

Dominic Grieve: During our debate, there has been a blurring of the line between the draft order and the Assembly measure. The detail and the meat will be in the measure, not in the order, which is likely to be a brief document. How can pre-legislative scrutiny of the order give any reassurance to the House that it will be satisfied with the measure that will be introduced in the Assembly?

Hywel Francis: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point to which the Under-Secretary of State for Wales will respond in due course. I am not the Secretary of State.
	The Bill allows for a final stage of devolution for Wales whereby the Assembly would become a fully functioning Parliament with primary legislative powers. I agree with the Government that a referendum of the people of Wales is necessary to determine that point, and I am pleased that many organisations and people across Wales concur. Recently, I was pleased to receive a resolution from the Presbyterian Church in Wales that supported such a referendum. My Committee believes that the Bill would benefit from certain enhancements. We need a strict limitation on the calling of a second referenduma point that has been well made by other contributors to our debate. Referendums cannot be called persistently until they return the desired result, and that should be reflected in the Bill. The Committee came to the conclusion that two National Assembly terms are an appropriate period between a first and a subsequent referendum.
	The Committee recommended, too, that the wording of the referendum should be included in the Bill. The question should be clear and straightforwardin essence, it simply has to ask the people of Wales whether or not they wish to have a Welsh Parliament. The wording is not dependent upon the time or year that the question is asked, so it can be set out now.
	A key theme of our report is the roles of the Secretary of State, as set out in the Bill. Our report, like some participants in our debate, questioned the desirability of some of those roles. If we are serious about democratic devolution we need to move, or at least ease, the Secretary of State from a pre-devolutionary world to a modern democratic and decentralised one. I am sure that he would be happy to move with these new times.
	In relation to draft Orders in Council, the Secretary of State would have the power to refuse to lay a draft order before Parliament. That power would be appropriate if the draft order did not comply with the Bill or did not conform to parliamentary rules. It would not, however, be appropriate for the Secretary of State to refuse an order on political or policy grounds. For that reason, the Committee believes that the rejection of a draft order is the preserve of Parliament, not the Government of the day. It would be more appropriate for the Secretary of State to be limited to assessing the validity of a draft order. He should not make decisions to lay such an order based on policy and political judgment or advantage. Similarly, the Secretary of State could refuse to lay the draft order for the referendum, despite the National Assembly voting by a two thirds majority in favour of holding that referendum. Again, we believe that Parliament, not the Government of the day, holds the authority to accept or reject a call for a referendum. For that reason, we recommend that the Secretary of State should not have the power to refuse a call for a referendum.
	As readers of our report will see, there was no consensus on the Government's proposals for electoral reform. The majority support, as I do, the Government's proposals, and it should be noted that there was no minority report. My personal view is that, whatever the merits of the arguments on each side of the debate, the Government and all parties need to proceed on a cross-party basis. Electoral reform should not get caught up in internecine party politics. The Secretary of State may well wish to consider whether, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen said in his contribution, the present system is an unloved and confusing creature that causes more grief than it is worth. I believe that, as he suggested, a national list may be a better option.
	It is incumbent upon all Members to take the heat out of the debate on electoral reform and to find a way forward that gains cross-party consensus. Without that, the many welcome proposals in the Bill could be drowned out by the argument on what is for many of us a very minor part of a welcome improvement to the devolution settlement for Wales. The Secretary of State has it in his gift as the sponsor of the Bill to give serious consideration to other proposals.
	Finally, as Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee, I have been at pains to recognise that all parties have made a contribution to the journey of the people of Wales towards democratic devolution. Unless we recognise this, particularly in the absence of an historic Welsh convention, we are in danger of failing to learn the lessons of history, although I should add, as an objective historian, that my party, the Labour party, had the decisive role in achieving victory in 1997 and, I have to acknowledge, a defeat in 1979.
	Today there should be consensus around the belief that the Government of Wales Bill is about delivering better public services for the people of Wales and greater democratic accountability to the people of Wales. The Welsh Affairs Committee has a vital role to play in ensuring that the diverse views of the people of Wales are clearly heard in Westminster. We aim to champion the people of Wales here and certainly not to challenge or undermine our National Assembly. Together, as Welsh Members in Parliament and in the Assembly, we can work in harmony to strengthen our public services, and together we can strengthen our democracy in Wales. The Bill has the potential to do that, if the Secretary of State listens, as I am sure he will, to the constructive proposals being made tonight in the House and outside the House in Wales.

Elfyn Llwyd: I add my sincere condolences to the words already uttered regarding Lord Merlyn-Rees and Lord Stratford. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) on taking over the brief for the Wales Office. However, it is not her golden hour. Like others, I find it strange that a reasoned amendment hasbeen tabled, but she has made her caseunconvincingly, with respect.
	For the most part, the Bill is welcome, but there are parts of it that need strengthening and amendment. If, as has become standard procedure, the Government introduce a raft of amendments before Report, it would undoubtedly ease the process if the same were made available to all in good time, with cogent explanatory notes.
	There is a broad consensus in favour of the separation of the Executive from the legislature. That is to be welcomed. Less welcome is the assertion in the Bill that pursuant to such change, there is a need for change in the National Assembly standing orders and that those standing orders must be made by the Secretary of State for Wales. Why is that so, when the core point is to ensure that the National Assembly is able to take charge of new powers for itself? Given that we have a democratic institution that is up and running, surely the Assembly could be left to look after its own House and its own standing orders. I hope that that will be the case in due course, contrary to some of the suggestions made earlier.
	Before examining specific aspects of the Bill, it is right to point out that the better governance of Wales could have been assured in a bolder, simpler and more transparent way had the Government followed the full proposals of the Richard commission. In that regard the Bill represents a missed opportunity. It is all the more disappointing because the lost opportunity came about because of internal wrangling in new Labour, so we have a Bill that is the progeny of a 13(2)(b) fudge adopted so conveniently by the First Minister. I make that overtly political point because it means that the better governance of Wales is to be put on hold for over a decade at the behest of a few selfish new Labour Back Benchers from Wales. Perhaps the more important point is that we are left with an unnecessarily complex and cumbersome procedure for legislating in the National Assembly. As a member of the Richard commission said, it is a system that will work only if there is an enormous amount of pulling in the same direction between Cardiff and Westminster.
	Before examining the triple lock procedure for getting an Order in Council, let us consider the inordinate delays that already exist in introducing legislation by Order in Council. I shall give the House an example of a measure that has taken more than three years to come about in the National Assembly. It is entirely uncontentious and is entitled the Removal and Disposal of Vehicles (Amendment) (Wales) Regulations 2005. The Minister grins. I had a private discussion with him some time ago, in which I expressed my concern about the delays in the Orders-in-Council procedure. I said that sometimes it takes between 18 months and two years. The Minister shook his head and said that I had got the timing wrong.The real example that I gave started its journey on 10 April 2002 and finished in November 2005, so I might just have been right in my estimate. That is more than three years.

Chris Ruane: The hon. Gentleman said two.

Elfyn Llwyd: Did I? As usual, I am being generous to the Government. However, it is a genuine concern and I hope the procedure can be streamlined. The Second Reading debate is not the time for such a discussion, but in Committee I hope to go through what happened during the passage of that order.
	We need to find ways of streamlining the process if it is to be fit for purpose. The triple lock procedure is worrying. The National Assembly, the Executive, the Counsel General or a Member of the Assembly can present a request to the Secretary of State for Wales. The Secretary of State calls that making a bid, which is a rather unfortunate choice of words, as it implies an element of lottery. In any event, if the Secretary of State declines, the legislation will not advance.
	One can think of any number of reasons or excuses that a less sympathetic Secretary of State than the right hon. Gentleman might employfor example, I shall not accept the proposed measure because it is the UK Government's intention to legislate for England and Wales in a similar way in the future. That would be a perfectly reasonable response. It could also be a brake put on the National Assembly by Westminster for less benign reasons. As I said earlier in an intervention on the right hon. Gentleman, we should consider including in the Bill some form of review or appellate procedure.
	Clause 94 gives the Secretary of State 60 days after receipt of the request for a measure to lay a draft or to give written notice to the First Minister of his refusal to do so and the reasons for that refusal. Crucially, it is not clear what would happen next. The White Paper suggested that the Secretary of State should not decline to lay an order for trivial reasons, which is hardly comforting because common sense dictates that that must be the case.
	The big question concerns where an appeal will lie. I am not saying that the National Assembly will always be right, but the Bill contains sufficient safeguards on policy, other legislation and the supreme court. What will happen if the Secretary of State denies the National Assembly's settled will for whatever reason? Some commentators have said that the next stage would be judicial review. As I have said, far be it from me to steer work away from my fellow lawyers, many of whom are going hungry because of the Government's recent prevarications, but I view the prospect of multiple judicial reviews with absolute dismay, because it means that we are introducing a flawed system. The real issue is the need for an unambiguous review or appellate procedure to address unusual situations, and I hope that we examine that matter carefully in Committee and consider how best to address it. It is little short of a constitutional outrage for the decision to lie with the Secretary of State alone, which is no better than a decision by the Secretary of State in the old Wales Office before democratic devolution.
	It is worth considering the possibility of referral by the Counsel General to the supreme court, which would be similar in essence to the referral powers in clauses 95 and 98when I referred to clause 101 earlier, I meant clause 98. That suggestion is not unreasonable, because the basis of a referral for judicial review is whether a public body or a person acting as a public bodyin this case, the Secretary of Statehas acted reasonably in executing its function, and the same question could equally well be put to the supreme court under the powers in the Bill.

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman has made an important point. The difficulty is, however, that if anyone wanted to land the judiciary with the problem of its becoming politicised, they would ask it to resolve such a question. As it stands, the question is not a legal question because it involves the exercise of a political discretion by the Secretary of State, which is not a semi-judicial or administrative function.

Elfyn Llwyd: The core point would be whether the Secretary of State acted reasonably in the circumstances. It is clear that the supreme court should not examine a policy area, and I take the hon. Gentleman's point about the danger. I would have preferred the Bill to contain a more streamlined procedure and a normal reasonableness test.

Dominic Grieve: rose

Elfyn Llwyd: The hon. Gentleman is about to kick me again.

Dominic Grieve: I am not seeking to kick the hon. Gentleman, and we must return to that important matter in Committee. He has rightly raised the question whether the Secretary of State should have the power to veto the procedure as opposed to Parliament.

Elfyn Llwyd: I agree with the hon. Gentleman and have no doubt that the matter will be subject to considerable debate in Committee. Many believe that there must be a means of reviewing the decision. If the Bill is left as it stands, it will be an affront to the National Assembly. The potential blockage couldI believe that this will be inevitablecause considerable friction between both legislatures and, potentially, both Executives, and an unambiguous and rigorous safeguard is therefore required.
	Clause 100 continues the theme, which runs through the Bill, of the Secretary of State's influence and power, to which the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik), who is a repetitious man, referred several times. From my reading of clause 100, a less worthy man than the present Secretary of State could scupper the Assembly's legislative plans on a whim, perhaps because of hostility towards the Assembly and irrespective of the subject matter of any proposed legislation. In particular, I direct hon. Members' attention to the powers in clause 101, which is very widely drawn. If such draconian powers were invoked, how would oversight take place? Again, the matter could form a constitutional time bomb that must be defused in due course.
	On the Secretary of State for Wales approving a draft measure by laying an order, we still face the difficulty that the other place has taken a consistently critical view of Orders in Council, principally because Orders in Council are unamendable. I raised that point when the Secretary of State made his initial statement earlier this year, and he said that the Parliament Act would be invoked in that case. In my view, consideration from the very beginning of the use of the Parliament Act in the working of the Bill is evidence of a fundamental flaw, and the situation is a recipe for disaster and constitutional conflict.
	Put simply, if it is envisaged that the Parliament Act must be invoked regularly, the system is surely wrong from the beginning. I expressed that view when the Secretary of State made his initial statement and have seen no evidence to the contrary. As Lord Richard said in his evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee on 25 October 2005:
	I have got some major qualifications about it, particularly on the Orders in Council procedure where I think, frankly, the idea that that is going to get an easy ride going through Parliament in principle to start off with is doubtful.
	Even if Lord Richard was being a tad pessimistic, and if even the other place gives the Bill a fair passage, we are still left with a procedure that is likely to be very unpopular with their lordships, regardless of which Government are in power down the Corridor. It would have been much better to have accepted the Richard commission proposals in full.
	I repeat my earlier question: will the Salisbury convention apply to proposed measures from the National Assembly Executive?

Kevin Brennan: rose

Elfyn Llwyd: I had hoped that the Minister would respond, but I have got a Whip

Kevin Brennan: Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the Salisbury convention should apply to measures in the Government's manifesto in Wales and the UK in relation to this Bill?

Elfyn Llwyd: I have no doubt that the Salisbury convention will be prayed in aid in the inevitable tussle with the other place. If the hon. Gentleman is asking me whether I approve of the gerrymandering technique, my answer is no because I would have no truck with it. I hope that that particular debate does not end up in another place, but I think that it will.
	The proposed increase in the powers and responsibilities of the Assembly Members will probably not be popular inside or outside this House, but I cannot see any other means by which to increase membership. Looking at stage 3 of the process, I am still at a loss to fathom why there has to be a super-majority of two thirds, rather than a simple majority, to trigger the referendum. In previous exchanges, the Secretary of State has said that the referendum will be called for when there is political consensus in favour of it. How will that be gauged or arrived at? I hope that it will not merely be a consensus within the Labour party.
	My major criticismI have some sympathy with the reasoned amendment in this regardconcerns the self-serving nature of the ban on dual membership. I will not go through all the evidence, which other Members will have seen, from the Electoral Reform Society, the electoral commissioner and many independent commentators who are in a position to make cogent comments. Many people believe that there is abundant evidence to show that there is no case for change. I am sure that there will be much debate in Committee about this partisan provision, which was involved in pre-orange revolution Ukraine, but has been seen nowhere else. What an endorsement. No doubt Leonid Kutchma has been advising the Secretary of State, because he is the only person who would have any real experience of it. The right hon. Gentleman said earlier that it was looked at in New Zealand and in New Brunswick, Canada. Indeed it was, but it was rejected: he did not quite finish the story. It has been rejected in many areas, and there are good reasons why that should be. Some ambitious apologist will remind me that it was in the manifesto. Yes, it was, but new Labour's vote was 35 per cent. UK-wide and 42 per cent. in Waleshardly an overwhelming endorsement. Given that no one mentioned it during the entire election campaign, not to me anyway, it was unlikely to have been uppermost in the minds of those who did vote for new Labour.
	Yesterday, I took part in a radio discussion in which the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) said that he wished that Plaid Cymru's lukewarm support for the Bill could have been much stronger. My response is this: we have the privilege of considering the contents of every Bill instead of nodding them through regardless, as he does. In this case, there is a lot of amending to dothat is why we are lukewarm. The Bill represents a step forward, but it could have done much more. I trust that the debates in Committee will be productive so that ultimately we have a Bill that is worthy of far warmer support.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I am pleased to rise in support of the Bill and in opposition to the reasoned amendment tabled by Conservative Front Benchers.
	I begin by expressing my condolences on the deaths of   Lord Merlyn-Rees and Lord Stratford. Their contribution to political life was inestimable and they will be greatly missed.
	In contrast to the rather odd comments made by the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd), I commend the speeches that Members have made so far. Although they have been poles apart, they have contributed to a constructive debate. Instead of being an ambitious apologist, I shall offer my own contribution without, I hope, suffering any inapt denigration.
	I commend the introduction of the Bill. The fact that it is opposed by some who feel that it does not go far enough and others who feel that it goes much too far suggests that the Secretary of State and his Front-Bench colleagues have got the balance right. The crux of the matter is that it is being perceived in both ways because it will succeed in putting the power very firmly with the Welsh public as opposed to any vested interests, think tanks, commissions and so on. People voted strongly for what was in the Labour manifesto. They made their choice, and I do not apologise for that. If there were to be any wholesale transfer of primary powers, they would need to vote again.
	The Bill has managed to achieve a fine balance in bringing together most complexions of political opinion. Much of it has already been agreed on across the Chamber. Splitting the Executive from the legislature is a relatively uncontroversial measure that will help hugely and is overdue, as the situation has been confused.
	Given the other two main areas, however, I am reminded of the Meatloaf song, One out of three ain't bad.

Ian Lucas: It was two out of three.

Huw Irranca-Davies: So it was. That suggests that the Committee stage will be even more difficult.
	We can already see the opposition to providing for a stronger Assembly with enhanced legislative powers. I can understand the logic of the arguments advanced by Conservative Front Benchers, but there will be ample time in Committee and in the other place for them to table amendments to try to get what they want, argue the case and vote on it. I am afraid that voting against the proposal on Second Reading takes us away from what we all assumed was going to be the direction of the new leadership of the partya much more consensual approach that recognised the cross-party consensus that has been building in Wales in favour of devolution as it is now and in favour of letting the Welsh public choose whether to take it any further.

David Davies: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that consensus means agreeing on all the things that one can agree on, not everyone else going along with the Labour party just because it happens to be in government?

Huw Irranca-Davies: I make no apologies for my party being in governmentthat is a very good thing. The fact that we moved to devolution at all was because of a consensus that was the direct polar opposite of 18 years of Conservative colonial rule in Wales. The people of Wales rebelled and said, We will move towards devolution, and the Liberals, the Welsh Nationalists and others were on board.
	I want to touch on the representation of the business voice in the Bill. Clauses 72 to 75 deal with the partnership council, the local government scheme and the voluntary sector scheme. The clause on local government runs to 21 lines and the clause on the voluntary sector runs to 38 lines. That recognises the importance of those two sectors. Almost like an apology at the end, the clause on business organisations runs to four lines. The clause on local government states:
	The Welsh Ministers must make a scheme (the local government scheme) setting out how they propose . . . to sustain and promote local government in Wales.
	It says that they
	must keep the local government scheme under review, and . . . may from time to time remake or revise it
	and that every year they must publish a reportand so on. That is replicated as regards the voluntary sector, whereby Welsh Ministers must produce an annual report and sustain and promote the interests of voluntary sector organisations.
	All that is absolutely right. However, we are missing a trick if, in my constituency and across the whole of Wales, we fail to recognise the immense economic regeneration, and improvements to people's quality of life, that can be achieved by business interestsmicro-businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises and large companies. When the Bill moves into Committee, the Government should either table an amendment to redress that balance, or accept another amendment that may be tabled, to replicate some of the details in the clauses on the voluntary sector and local government.

Roger Williams: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is sincere in wanting to improve consultation between the Welsh Assembly and various bodies in Wales, but does he agree that one consequence of separating the Executive from the legislature is thatrepresentatives on the partnerships will be representatives of the Welsh Assembly Government and not of the Assembly as a whole? In a sense, therefore, these measures will reduce consultation rather than enhance it.

Huw Irranca-Davies: Enhanced consultation is set out clearly in the Bill, and there are key words such as sustaining and promoting the interests of various sectors, but that is absent when it comes to the business community. The words are indicative of the approach. Clause 75 says:
	Welsh Ministers must carry out consultation with such organisations representative of business . . . as they consider appropriate having regard to the impact of the exercise by the Welsh Ministers of their functions on the interests of business.
	Business by its nature is to do not only with business interests and economic regeneration but with transport, education and skills, and so many other aspects, so if we are seriously to empower all sectors to contribute to the Welsh agendathe team Wales approachwe need to bring business much more into line. There is provision to make that work, but it needs to be more explicit in the Bill.
	I turn to the highly controversial question of regional Members and first-past-the-post Members. I note that Lord Richard, the chair of the commission, stated:
	There is something wrong in a situation in which five people can stand in Clwyd, none of them can be elected, and then they all get into the Assembly. On the face of it that does not make sense. I think a lot of people in Wales find that it does not.
	Many Members who were supportive of the PR settlement in Wales have become disenchanted with it. The problem is the type of PR that we have imposed on the Assembly. I challenge Conservative Members to say that the system has not been abused. I will happily provide examples, and will do so in Committee if I am chosen to serve on it. There has been abuse and that is the problem, and Lord Richard recognises that.
	Under the Bill, regional and constituency Members will have to describe themselves more accurately. That is not political niggling. At the moment, regional Members have the ability to cherry-pick and to promote themselves as local in one area or as supporting a popular or a good campaigning issue but to hide from tricky issues. That is not promoting democracy; it is an abuse of the democratic system. Let them be a regional Member and take the rough with the smooth. Let them put their office not where they think they will win a seatit could be an Assembly first-past-the-post seat or a Westminster seatbut in the areas of most need. That is where my offices are. There seems to be no interest in doing that. If regional Assembly Members seriously intend to tackle problems where, in their wide constituencies, there is greatest need and the most challenges, let them take their offices there and let us test that. At the moment, that is not happening. We have been accused of gerrymandering, but I throw that straight back. Too often we have seen the use of newspapers and the placing of advertisements and offices.

Hywel Williams: I ask the hon. Gentleman the question that I asked the Secretary of State earlier: how would the Bill remedy what seems to concern the hon. Gentleman and other Members? It seems to me to be part of the rough and tumble of politicsperhaps he does not like that.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I point out to the hon. Gentleman that I do not suffer any great disadvantage under the present system, but there are two equal but slightly different types of Assembly Member. A regional Assembly Member masquerading as local here and local there as he chooses is not the rough and tumble of politics but misrepresentation. Missives and memos, which have now been discarded, have said that that could never happen and that it was a case purely of an Assembly Member putting forward some ideas, but the very putting forward of those ideas is testament to the fact that an Assembly Member thought that the current system could be abused. That is what we are trying to change.

Dominic Grieve: I want to take up the hon. Gentleman on his point, because he clearly takes the view that there should be two categories of Assembly Member. Although there may be two routes into the Assembly, it is dangerous to say that members of a corporate body have a different status in relation to each other. That is why I am troubled by the Government's approach, although I am sympathetic to some of the hon. Gentleman's points. I am a believer in first past the post and always have been, but the tinkering around the edges of the PR system that he and the Secretary of State are proposing is iniquitous. If there is to be a PR system, it should be on a national basis, and not just for Wales.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I return to the pointand I think that the Bill envisages the situationthat Assembly Members should be equal but different. A local constituency first-past-the-post Assembly Member has a specific constituency interest and a right to describe themselves as local and to campaign on issues specific to that constituency. It is regrettable and it was never envisaged that regional Assembly Members would choose to make use of the system to make political capital rather than to work on behalf of the area. Unfortunately, as we saw in the memo that was circulated, one Assembly Member envisaged where that could easily be done. It can, and I am afraid that the evidence is there for everybody to see.
	Lord Richard talks of how, the morning after, Assembly Members who had been denied the chance of first past the post were suddenly resurrected. That causes immense confusion. It is a Lazarus-like resurrection, except that he had the decency to wait at least three days. Assembly Members who have been rejected outright by their electorate are suddenly back in place. As the Secretary of State said, the question of choosing one or the other is not simply to the advantage of one party. It will also be the case for Labour Members.

David Davies: Is it not the case that under our system members of the public have a chance to reject people? Under the system that the hon. Gentleman proposes, they will not have that chance but the Assembly Member may still pop up the next day. Should he not have the intellectual honesty to admit that the proposals set out in Llais Dros Gymru in the first place were incorrect? If he wants to do away with proportional representation altogether, he might be surprised at where the support for that comes from.

Huw Irranca-Davies: There is a perfectly coherent proposal in the Bill, which is to choose one or the other. It is the same for all political parties and every Member will have that choice.
	This Bill should be supported on Second Reading. Conservative Front Benchers know that they can raise their objections during subsequent stages. If they choose to push their amendment to a Division and to reject the Bill out of hand, they will be objecting to the principle of devolution. If there is one thing on which the other parties are united, it is that the Welsh public should be given the opportunity if they wish to take forward devolution. It should not be rejected out of hand as the Conservative amendment seeks to do.

Stephen Crabb: Whatever questions people in Wales are currently asking about devolution, I do not believe that the Bill provides the answers. It contains useful measures to enhance the effectiveness of the Assembly's workings, which I welcome, but at its heart lies a very unwelcome political fix. I refer to part 3, which sets out the Order-in-Council procedure for granting further law-making powers to the Assembly.
	By constructing a hugely complex procedure whereby the Assembly can essentially legislate for itself in the fields devolved to it by part 1 of schedule 5, and which requires Parliament to give its consent, the Secretary of State has pulled off the ultimate devolution trick. He can tell his impatient pro-devolution colleagues in the Assembly that he has given them full law-making powers in all but name. He can also tell colleagues who are more cautious about devolutionsome may be present nowthat Parliament is retaining its sovereignty and that part 3 does not constitute a significant extension of current practice. It is a political fix and I do not believe that the British constitution should be bent and shaped by such a fix.
	Apart from the constitutional issues, I am very concerned about the way in which the Order-in-Council procedure would work in practice. It seems to rely heavily on a large measure of good will and shared objectives on the part of the Secretary of State and the Welsh Assembly Government. It is not difficult to envisage circumstances in which the relationship might not be so cordial and the scope for disappointment, confusion and, perhaps, legislative breakdown could be considerable.
	If we are to extend and deepen the devolution settlement, the Order-in-Council mechanism, which emasculates Parliament and bypasses a referendum, is certainly not the way to do it. Without doubt, the Bill develops the settlement in a way to which the people of Wales never assented when they voted by a 1 per cent. majority to establish the Assembly in 1997. It is simply not true that, as the Secretary of State would have us believe, the Government of Wales Act 1998 provided for exactly this kind of arrangement.
	As has already been said today, Lord Richard himself argued that the proposals for Orders in Council had the potential to be a
	concealed grant of almost a direct legislative competence down to Cardiff.
	Professor Rawlings of the London School of Economics has argued that the approach could be described as a
	form of quasi-legislative devolution.
	The claim that the Order-in-Council procedure is nothing more than what was agreed to by the Welsh people in 1997 is a bizarre and misleading interpretation of the Bill. The truth is that it goes significantly beyond what was agreed to following the referendum eight years agowhich is why, if part 3 is to be implemented, it should be implemented only after a new referendum decision.
	The one fundamental driving force for devolution should be the people of Wales, and what they want for their country. If they want to take the devolution settlement further to give the Assembly full law-making powers, let us get on with it by using part 4. If they do not want that, let us not try to bring it about by using a byzantine alternative route that would risk further alienating Welsh people from the body that is supposed to bring decision making closer to them. It is essential for those making policy to move in step with Welsh opinion. Otherwise, they will risk creating an even more remote devolved body that will lack real meaning for the Welsh people.
	It is worth reminding ourselves just how divided the Welsh nation was over the original devolution question in 1997. Wales was split down the middle on whether to create the National Assembly. Eleven of the 22 Welsh local authority areas returned no verdicts, while just 559,000 peoplea mere 25 per cent. of the Welsh electoratevoted in favour. At the time, many of us believed strongly that that was a flimsy basis for the creation of an Assembly that could command popular legitimacy and interest, but we in the Conservative party accepted the fact of devolution and, as many neutral commentators have said, the Conservative group in the Assembly has perhaps worked harder than anyone else to make the institution work. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that large chunks of the Welsh electorate are disengaged from devolution.
	At the first Assembly election in 1999, there was a 46 per cent. turnout and just over 1 million people voted. In 2003, only 850,000 votes were cast. There was a 38 per cent. turnout, about the same as the United Kingdom turnout for the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, an institution that is supposed to represent the very paragon of remoteness to the people of this country. That is a dreadful record for such a young institution, which was set up to satisfy some unmet desire for devolution on the part of the Welsh people.

Wayne David: Is the hon. Gentleman arguing that, if there is a referendum, one of the questions posed ought to be, Should there be any Assembly at all??

Stephen Crabb: My view is that the Welsh Assembly is not going to go away. [Interruption.] Let me answer the hon. Gentleman's question. I have said in the past that a future referendum question should include the option of abolishing the Assembly altogether. I think that that could constitute a healthy democratic mechanism to allow the venting of the significant stream of opinion in Wales that does not favour its existence. I do not believe that that stream of opinion would winI do not think that there is a majority in favour of abolition, and I do not think that the Assembly will disappear at any point in the near futurebut, at the beginning of 2006, we are being asked to believe that there is a consensus in Wales on the need to extend and deepen the devolution settlement, and that the Bill is necessary at this time. It takes a huge leap of the imagination to accept that.

Hywel Williams: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could clear up a confusion that has arisen in my mind. I seem to remember that, during the Select Committee's discussions, he favoured a referendum including the option of abolition of the Assembly. Perhaps he could enlighten us on what has changed his mind.

Stephen Crabb: I think that my response to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) answers that question as well. The hon. Gentleman will recall from those Committee discussions that I thought that it would be healthy for the Welsh democratic process to allow the significant stream of opinion in the Principality that still has not come round to the idea of devolution, and would rather see it scrapped, to be aired. I do not think we should be afraid of that. I do not believe that it is deeply damaging, or even anti-Welsh, to suggest that a referendum should include such a question, and I remember that two Labour members of the Committee agreed with me.
	Let us be clear about this. I do not oppose further devolution, if the people of Wales choose it. I have no problem with stage 3 devolution as envisaged in part 4. Full devolution following a strong, positive referendum result is essential, however: it cannot be introduced through the back door without an opportunity for the people of Wales to vote. The problem lies in the constitutional trickery in part 3the Order-in-Council procedure.
	The Secretary of State has spoken on a previous occasion of his dislike of referendums and has said that other issues can be bundled into a referendum campaign so that what might have begun as a question about a specific issue becomes a mechanism for disgruntled voters to sound off about their general unhappiness with the Government of the day. That is a fair point. I well understand why he is concerned about how the electorate might behave after nine long years of his cynical Government. I think, though, that he underestimates the sophistication of the Welsh electorate when it comes to thinking about their Assembly. We should have nothing to fear from a referendum. The pace and direction of devolution must be dictated only by the Welsh people.
	As a member of the Select Committee, I want to record my disappointment at the way in which the Government produced the Bill without even waiting for the Committee to publish its report on the White Paper. That makes a mockery of pre-legislative scrutiny. Perhaps I should not be surprised, however. At no point during his appearance before the Committee for the inquiry did the Secretary of State appear to be in listening mode. That was particularly evident when he and the First Minister were asked about the proposals for altering electoral arrangements for constituency and regional list Members. Committee members will recall their double act when they sought, outrageously, to trash the reasonable and considered concerns put by the Electoral Commission and by Dr. Richard Wyn Jones and Dr. Roger Scully of Aberystwyth university, who said that the new arrangements could be seen as serving partisan interests and could therefore undermine confidence and participation in the electoral process. The First Minister laid into them, saying
	I think this is not their finest hour,
	and claiming that their statements were poor and unsupported. The Secretary of State himself then accused the Electoral Commission of being out of touch with political reality. It was all very unsavoury. Those tactics only served to reinforce the impression that deep partisan motivation underlies the changes in the electoral arrangements, and that the Labour party has no desire to achieve any cross-party consensus on the issue.

Albert Owen: The hon. Gentleman has been very honest in his answers to earlier interventions. Does he agree with his own Conservative association? He has named academics that gave evidence, but is he listening to his own constituency association, the only Conservative association in the UK to give evidence? Does he support it, yes or no?

Stephen Crabb: Pembrokeshire is a very independent-minded place and, as much as I try to train my association, we take different views. The person who wrote the submission to the consultation takes a different view from me and I have discussed it with her. I am happy to be transparent about that.
	To conclude, I want to see a strong, effective Assembly that is an expression of a vibrant political culture and embraces the full breadth of Welsh society, making decisions that deliver real value to the people of Wales. I would prefer to see such an Assembly rather than a remote and irrelevant one that has been designed and shaped by an ivory tower Welsh policy elite, far removed from the preferences of Welsh people. Yet that latter scenario is exactly where I think we are headed with the Bill. It must be for the Welsh people alone to dictate the pace and direction of devolution.

Dai Havard: I have reservations about the Bill, which I have made clear on a number of occasions. Not the least of them is that the animal created by the Assembly, the Richard commission, made proposals that to me were better and went a long way towards allaying some of my fears.
	My original fear was that we would require a referendum now. I do not agree with everything that my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr.   Williams) said, but many of my fears were addressed by him. The Government would do well to take account of some of the concerns about the process. If I am told that this is not a substantial shift and does not require a referendum because the control of the process is still vested in Parliament, some reassurance will be needed that that is really what is being said and that no sleight of hand is taking place. Essentially, that is the argument made by a number of Members.
	The process of pre-legislative scrutiny is clearly a good one, and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis) talked about different ways in which things could be done to make some proposals reality. It is disappointing that there has not been greater consultation with the Welsh people about the Bill and that there was not a draft Bill. These are serious comments.
	Constitutional affairs is not top of the queue in Merthyr. People do not talk about it on the bus very often. I do not have people coming up to me and saying, What about this Government of Wales Bill, Dai? What they do say is, How can Mike German come third in an election in Caerphilly and then, a few weeks later, end up as a deputy, running the whole outfit? I have to say that the reason for that is the stupid and twisted electoral process that we have in order to populate the assembly. It is not rocket science, but it is some form of science to which I may return later.

Cheryl Gillan: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and am enjoying his contribution. His constituents may come up to him and say, What is this pre-legislative scrutiny, then? What would the hon. Gentleman be scrutinising? It is obvious that he would be scrutinising a vague and broad measure and not the detail that would pass down to the Assembly. His constituents will be even more confused.

Dai Havard: Like the hon. Lady, I thought about voting against the Bill tonight, but I dismissed it for the reasons I gave earlier. These matters now have to go into Committee and it has to be proved that what we are told is to happen will take place. The Government recognise that there is work to be done to put proper flesh on the proposals.
	Some of the debate has been the wrong way around, as we have heard. It would have been better to have had a draft Bill. If there is to be real pre-legislative scrutiny, this Bill would have benefited. These are my tests, and I am not going to vote against the Bill tonight.

Hywel Williams: To refer back to the hon. Gentleman's constituents on the bus, would they, or the hon. Gentleman himself, have given evidence to Mr. Glyn Mathias at the Electoral Commission, who told the Welsh Affairs Committee that this was not an issue for Mr. German or any of the other candidates in that election as far as it could find out? Does the hon. Gentleman have any superior knowledge?

Dai Havard: The last time I saw Mr. Glyn Mathias was in Carmarthen castle at an event for the Historical Society. I have had plenty of opportunities to talk to Glyn Mathias, but I do not think that he is instrumental in this.
	I do not demur from the idea that it is daft to have someone standing on a list and also in a constituency. It is political gerrymandering of a sort, which does nothing at all for the legitimacy of the institution and does not do anything partisan for the Labour party. It also goes to guts of the proportional representation system that populates the institution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) talked about different processes to deal with some of the issues.
	Personally, I will not vote for PR. However, I also do not favour referendums. Since the time of Harold Wilson back in the 1960s, it seems to have become the thing to have referendums on constitutional issues. The test that I applied earlier was whether the measure was required now. It certainly will be required later, and what is good about the Bill is that it institutionalises the idea that there will not be primary powers unless a referendum takes place.
	We are not dealing with my worries about the current electoral process. My concern is that I might not get the opportunity to deal with them later either. The Bill talks about the questionnot the questionswhich will be whether we have primary powers or not. Where is the question about the electoral process? Does the Bill actually debar that from happening at that point? That is the crunch for me and it will make the difference at Third Reading as to whether I support it. That question underlies a lot of the problems that have been talked about in terms of the interim measures on the electoral process.
	I was in favour of devolution and I still am. The Welsh peoplenarrowly, as the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) saidvoted to democratise the powers of the Wales Office. They did not vote for much more than that. We therefore have to be very careful, which is why the power for extension has to remain here. That is where the Welsh people wanted it to stay. Unless and until that changes, that must be the point at which a referendum takes place. In that referendum, we will also have to deal with the electoral process. I want to know whether, by voting for the Bill, we will avoid thatby default, design or some sleight of handor whether that is the point at which the debate will take place.

David Davies: I am delighted to declare an interest in all senses of the word, as I have been sitting as a Welsh Assembly Member since 1999. I well remember at the time of the referendum, in which I also played a partI am certainly not ashamed to say that I voted against the AssemblyLabour politicians were falling over themselves to assure us that the people of Wales would be voting for an Assembly with secondary legislative powers and not a Parliament with primary legislative powers. They were clear about that because they knew that there was not the same enthusiasm in Wales for a Parliament as there was in Scotland.
	That original legislation was, at best, inchoate and, at worst, completely incompetent; hence the fact that we are back here, eight years later, discussing the whole thing all over again.
	It would be totally undemocratic if the people of Wales, having voted for an Assembly, were to have a Parliament forced upon them. The powers that the Assembly already has are more than adequatewe have enormous powers over all the devolved areas and over all matters that are likely to improve public services in Wales. The fact is that the Assembly has performed very poorly in its use of those powersa problem that dates back to its very first meeting. We had to appoint some Ministers at that meeting, and out of all the people that Labour had returned, we managed to find a Welsh language Minister who could not speak a word of Welsh and an agriculture Minister who was a vegetarian. Despite the various problems that confronted Wales at the time, the first decision that this motley group of people took was to spend what they said would be 11 millionit turned out to be 66 millionon a brand new debating chamber. I went to see it the other day with the hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) and it is a very fine building. Indeed, 66 million buys a lot of building, but it would also buy a lot of health care and education facilities. As I said, the Assembly already has significant powers in respect of those responsibilities.
	One Member talked earlier about NHS waiting lists coming down, but the reality is that waiting lists in Wales are two to three times longer than those just across the border in England. Ambulance response times are a disgrace. We have problems with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, yet the Assembly have delivered a 15 million reorganisation that has led to 22 quangos in Wales dealing with health, instead of the four that existed before the referendum. We were promised that education would be the Assembly's top priority, yet we are witnessing the closure of small schools. Another two have closed in my constituency only this week, at the order of the Assembly's Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning. Cuts in funding for school sixth forms are likely to take place as a result of the new formula that Education and Learning Wales is considering. Of course, if the Labour Administration had their way, they would impose tuition fees on us. They talk about a nation fit from the cradle to the grave, but what we are getting from them is failure from the nursery to the bursary.
	The Assembly also have significant powers in other areas, such as local government. They have the power to decide funding for local authorities, and the reality is that council taxes have gone up exponentiallyby 130 per cent. in my constituency, and that is before the impact of rebanding.
	The White Paper and the various documents issued at the time of the referendum stated that the top priority for the Welsh Assembly would be to ensure that the level of gross domestic product in Wales is the same as that for the whole of the United Kingdom. When the Conservatives unfortunately lost the 1997 election, average GDP in Wales was 85 per cent. of the UK average. The Assembly's top priority was to improve that figure to 100 per cent.; the reality is that Welsh GDP now languishes at 79 per cent. of the UK average. What a dreadful failure but how very unsurprising, given that one of the Assembly's flagship economic policies was to set up Welsh embassies across the more exotic cities of the world.
	Such failures are summed up by our failure to deal with agriculture. During the foot and mouth crisis, I was telephoned by a farmer's wife from Raglan who was unable to get a movement licence for a bull because an official in the Welsh Assembly's agriculture department did not know what sex it was. Apparently, the farmer's wife had not included that information on the form. [Interruption.] Those Members who do not come from the countryside should think about it. In contemplating giving more powers to the people responsible for such problems, I am reminded of what Herbert Morrison once said about giving more powers to the colonies. He said that it would be like giving a latchkey, a bank account and a shotgun to a 10-year-old. These people should not be trusted with more powers under any circumstances. [Interruption.]
	I am waiting for interventions and I am very disappointed that Labour Members have so little to say. They have been telling us all day that the Secretary of State will have the final say, but that is no caveat. It is probably better than giving blanket powers straight away, but the reality is that this provision will cause all sorts of problems in years to come. As has been pointed out, a non-Labour-led Assemblya coalition-led one, for examplecould ask for powers from a Labour Secretary of State for Wales and be refused them, or a Labour-led Assembly could be refused powers by a Conservative Secretary of State for Wales. I certainly look forward to witnessing the latter in the next few years. One can only imagine the rows in the press when such things happen, which will be yet another way of driving a wedge between England and Wales.

Ian Lucas: The point is that the Secretary of State can already prevent the Assembly's proposals from being implemented in legislation. That position will not change and that relationship is at the core of today's proposals, so as an argument for a referendum, the hon. Gentleman's point is completely without merit.

David Davies: It is not without merit. The Secretary of State for Wales currently works quite well with the First Minister because both come from the same party, so the relationship has not really been tested. I suspect that the real problems will begin when the Secretary of State for Wales and the First Minister come from different parties. My point is simply that this proposal is a recipe for division. The more powers that we give to the Assembly and the more importance that we place on the Secretary of State's deciding whether to give powers the Assembly, the more likely it is that such divisions will occur.
	Another problem is that future legislation will not subject to the existing level of scrutiny. I am new to this Chamber but I have learned very quickly that there are more than 1,000 people herein this place and in anotherwho can contribute their views on any legislation. Most legislation is amended significantly during its passage, and although Members of Parliament will have some ability to amend legislation affecting Wales, such scrutiny will not be anything like the same. Scrutiny is likely to rest with the 60 Welsh Assembly Members and the 11 members of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee. With the best will in the world, no matter how high the standardsthey are particularly high among my own group, of coursethose 71 people are never going to have the same pool of experience and expertise as the more than 1,000 people in the Houses of Parliament.

Albert Owen: The hon. Gentleman touches on a very important point about scrutiny by the National Assembly. Is not the fact that it sits only two to three days a week one of its downfalls? Would it not be better to extend its sittings? Of course, if that happened the hon. Gentleman would be in a very uncomfortable position, because he would have to stay there to scrutinise such legislation, rather than being here. Would he be prepared to give up his dual mandate for the sake of better legislation in the National Assembly?

David Davies: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that I am doing what the Government of Wales Bill allows me to do. Perhaps he should have foreseen the possibility of people winning in two places; indeed, many did: many Labour Members of Parliament went on to become Labour Assembly Members. I shall deal with the question of the number of days that the Assembly sits in a moment, if he will allow me. In my opinion it would be completely unconstitutional and undemocratic to overturn the wishes of the people of Wales, who in a referendum clearly voted for an Assembly, not for a Parliament.
	I turn briefly to two other aspects of the Bill. One of the issues that was raised in relation to the number of days that the Assembly sits is very important. We all agree on the proposed splitting of the Executive from the legislature. It was also suggested that another 20 Assembly Members might be required, because such splitting would mean the removal of Assembly Ministers from the Assembly's scrutiny committees. I have grave concerns about that idea. I do not believe that the answer to the problems caused by this legislation is more Assembly Membersanother 20 people drawing their salaries. I have some sympathy with the point just made by the hon. Member for Ynys Mn (Albert Owen). If there is a problem with the level of scrutiny in the Assembly, the scrutiny committees should be merged and more properly focused on the job to be done. Or, as the hon. Member for Ynys Mn suggests, Assembly Members could consider the revolutionary idea of meeting more than two afternoons a week. If they decide to do that, I will put myself wherever I can be of most use to my constituents.

Cheryl Gillan: My hon. Friend is making an excellent contribution and I can see why his electors return him to the Assembly and to this House. Does he agree that it is ironic that the Government should bring forward proposals to change the legislative competence of the Assembly when it still has so much bedding down to do? Does he further agree that, after the 2007 election, it should absorb the changes by splitting off the Executive from the legislature long before it is given more powers? Does he agree that the management of the process is very poor?

David Davies: I fully agree with my hon. Friend, as I do on most matters that relate to devolution[Hon. Members: Most?] In fact, on virtually all matters, there is barely a cigarette paper to be put between us. My hon. Friend's point about allowing the Assembly to settle down is important. We had the referendum only seven years ago and the question that we should be addressing is that we have a Parliament in Scotland, an Assembly in Wales and a power-sharing arrangement in Northern Ireland, but nothing at all for the largest constituent part of the United Kingdom. That is the real problem that we have with the constitution at present, and that is what we should address.
	The changes to the voting system are being made for only one reason, and we all know that. They are being made for the benefit of the Wales Labour party. That is the only possible reason for the changes, and I thought that the flimsy excuses about Assembly Members who were worried because someone had opened an office in their constituency were pathetic. It has been my experience that whenever people want to protest about anything, the first person they go to is their constituency Member of Parliament and the second person is their constituency Assembly Member. Only if they meet with no luck from either will they find out who their regional list Members are. What is really annoying the Labour Assembly Members is not that they are at some sort of electoral disadvantage, but that they have lost the huge advantage that comes with incumbency. That must be making many of them very worried.

Mark Tami: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, but is it not the same old argument that additional list Members should not be given the same staffing and office costs allowances as properly elected Members?

David Davies: There is a huge argument to be had about the relative merits of all sorts of different proportional representation systems, but we should not have a governing party using its majority to push forward changes from which it will gain electoral benefit. The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard) was right to say that PR is not an issue on the omnibuses of Merthyr Tydfil, in the hostelries of Monmouthshire or in the supermarkets of Cardiff. Nobody is interested in proportional representation and the Government will get away scot-free. But everyone in this Chamber who knows about PR knows why the Government are doing this, and the Electoral Commission knows why they are doing it. It is a great shame that the sort of tricks that we might have seen in South Africa in the 1970s to prop up a failing regime are being imported into south Wales.
	I was delighted to stand against the original proposals for the Welsh Assembly. I can see that it has had some advantages in terms of openness, but those advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages. We have caused enormous damage to the UK which will result in our having to return to legislation in a few years' time. We have also possibly unleashed the lion of English nationalism.
	I am proud to be Welsh. I am also proud to be British, to be a Conservative and to be a Unionist. That is why we reject the proposals in the Bill.

Ian Lucas: The person who did most to deliver devolution in the United Kingdom was Margaret Thatcher. She alienated the people of Wales and Scotland so profoundly that she created the circumstances in 1997 that led to the setting up of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. We know from history that devolution referendums had been held before and had been unsuccessful. It was only because the Conservatives alienated people in Scotland and Wales so much by the manner in which they ran their Government between 1979 and 1997 that devolution was ever established.

Nigel Evans: The hon. Gentleman sets a dangerous precedent with his argument. Does he not appreciate that even at the last general election the Labour party lost to the Conservatives as a percentage of the vote? The valid point was made by the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) that resentment will grow in England because Scotland has a Parliament and Wales has an Assembly, now with increased powers. The only part of the UK that has been totally ignored is England.

Ian Lucas: I am very conscious of the relationship between England and Wales, England and Scotland, and England and the UK, because of the nature and position of my constituency, which I discuss regularly in the Chamber and will touch on in my speech. We have made progress with referendums on a regional basis. We had had approaching eight years of Labour Government before the referendum in the north-east. In those circumstances, the people said no. They said, We've got a Labour Government, so what do we need an assembly for? The position would have been different if the north-east had been asked that question in 1997.
	I wish to discuss two main aspects of the Bill. I welcome the fact that the Bill recognises the continued place of Wales within the UK. That is extremely important, and not only for constitutional reasons. The constituents in my border constituency see an integral relationship between England and Wales. The relationship exists not only in the private sector, where many of my constituents live and work on both sides of the borderand cross the border every day in the course of their livesbut also exists in the provision of public services. We had discussions late last year about the reorganisation of police services in Wales and they included much discussion of the close links between north-west England and north Wales in the operation of criminal markets, as they were called by chief constable Denis O'Connor. It is important that the links are recognised so that the public services can address the issues correctly.
	Health services are also provided by north-west England to north Wales. There are also close links between probation and prison services, because there are no prisons or youth custody centres in north Wales. It is important for north Wales, as distinct from south Wales, that there is a close working relationship between north-west England and north Wales. That is about the delivery of public services.

Daniel Kawczynski: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if Welsh citizens are to use services across the border in England, their local authorities should pay the going rate, rather than being subsidised by English taxpayers?

Ian Lucas: The hon. Gentleman is describing particular circumstances. I do not agree with what he said earlier about linking waiting times to the price of operations, because I do not think that it was factually correct. I do not know the particular circumstances that he mentions, so I cannot address that question. It is extremely important that public services are still delivered to my constituents from England.
	We also need a continued role for Westminster in legislation affecting Wales. In the context of any proposals for primary legislation for the Assembly in Cardiff, we must have provision for a referendum and I profoundly welcome this Bill and the guarantee that it contains. Furthermore, although the process set out in the Bill is novel, it will produce better legislation for the people of Wales. One thing that the Assembly has brought Wales is closer access for voluntary organisations, individuals and local government to its workings. Through joint Committees of AMs and MPs, there has been real progress in making better legislation for Wales, which brings benefits from the institutionthe Assemblybeing closer to the people of Wales, while taking into account the fact that in areas such as mine public services are also provided from across the border. Individuals thus benefit from having their views expressed by their Member of Parliament in this place.

David Jones: The hon. Gentleman refers to the fact that the Assembly is less remote from the people, but does he agree that there is a particular concern in north Wales that Cardiff seems geographically and spiritually remote from the people of north Wales, so does he share my concern that the North Wales Regional Committee does not figure in the new legislation and that it has in fact been abolished?

Ian Lucas: I am not sure that the North Wales Regional Committee, as it currently functions, is the most effective way of integrating north Wales more closely with the operations of the Assembly. I believe in more devolution. Wales is a nation with different regions and they should have more control over their affairs.

Albert Owen: My hon. Friend is right. The Bill does not propose to do away with the regional committee, but does he agree that regional buildings would be helpful? Scrutiny committees would be closer to the people, so that people in remote areas such as north Wales and on the periphery could witness the Chamber in progress as it examined legislation.

Ian Lucas: As ever, my hon. Friend makes a valuable point. It is a great disappointment to me that no Assembly offices are based in Wrexham, the biggest town in north Wales. I hoped that the Assembly would have done more to bring offices to different parts of Walesand, indeed, to bring more business to those areas.
	My second essential point was about the proposed provisions relating to the electorate and changes to the electoral system. I strongly support the proposal to disallow regional list Members from standing for constituencies. I would like the Bill to go further. Under the present Assembly electoral system, we have two votes. At the last Assembly election, I was able to vote for the Labour Assembly candidate in my constituency and on the regional list.

Nigel Evans: He lost.

Ian Lucas: Yes, that is correct. My regional constituency candidate lost, yet the strange thing is that the largest party at the Assembly election for the north Wales region was Labour, which gained 55,000 votes from individuals such as memore than any other party in north Walesbut on the regional list, the Labour party gained no Members at all.

David Jones: It is called proportional representation.

Ian Lucas: It is called defrauding the electorate; it is called wasted votessomething about which the Liberal Democrats have a lot to tell us. In 2003, they talked about wasted votes in their election literature, which I have with me. They said:
	If enough Labour voters switch to the Welsh Lib Dems with their 2nd vote, we can have a Tory Free Wales . . . Our region has 2 Tory AMs. Don't waste your 2nd VoteBack the Welsh Liberal Democrats to beat the Tories!
	I thought about that and it was true. I voted for Labour because it is my party, but I wasted my second vote and so did 55,000 other people in north Wales. We have an electoral system that is defrauding the people of north Wales and a political party that wants to exploit their views by trying to suggest that they should not vote for the party in which they believe. That is dishonest. That is gerrymandering and it should not be allowed.

Cheryl Gillan: I should have so much more sympathy with the hon. Gentleman, and would share his views, if the system were not one that his party brought in. I do not understand how Members on his Front Bench can ignore his strongly held views, but it was the Labour party's mechanism that was introduced.

Ian Lucas: I understand that point. I am expressing my views to my Front-Bench colleagues and I am sure that they are listening to them carefully. The same views have been expressed by other Labour Back Benchers today and I am sure that they will also be listened to carefully.
	There have been many accusations today from Opposition parties about Labour party gerrymandering, yet the Labour party is the only party to create an electoral system that disadvantages it. That is exactly what it did in 1999 when it set up the Assembly and allowed the introduction of proportional representation. It sent the Tories a lifeboat and a lifebelt. It gave the Liberal Democrats more representation than they had ever had and it helped out the nationalists. Our party is generous in its electoral system.
	Opposition parties have produced no evidence whatever that the modest proposal in the Bill would assist the Labour party. In north Wales, three of our candidates with extremely marginal seats will not have the lifebelt that the Labour party generously offered Opposition parties. They should not lecture us about gerrymandering. They should thank us for the resurrection of their political parties.

Roger Williams: It is a great pleasure to take part in this debate on the developing devolution situation in Wales. Unfortunately, the last time that the House considered devolution legislation I was not a Member, but I was interested in the way that the procedure was handled.
	It has correctly been pointed out that the referendum on setting up an Assembly was won only marginally. I could not get very enthused about the proposal. I did not think that it would capture the imagination of the Welsh people because it did not go far enough. One of the reasons why turnout in the 1997 referendum was so low was that the prospect for devolution in Wales was much less than for devolution in Scotland.
	The Bill will push forward the powers of the Welsh Assembly, which will appeal to the people of Wales, but it could be much better done. It seems illogical to give the Assembly powers to deliver health and education and to be responsible for local government, yet not to give it the necessary primary legislative powers to promote those services in Wales.

Nigel Evans: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is also illogical to have established the Welsh Assembly on the referendum and then to try to alter that settlement without asking the people of Wales? Surely that would be a sensible and logical thing to do. Why are the Government and the Liberal Democrats afraid to ask the people of Wales about extra powers?

Roger Williams: A referendum is not necessary. Although the Assembly is very unpopular in Wales from time to timeindeed, people blame it for many of the ills of Walesthat is a misrepresentation because the National Assembly Government are responsible for the delivery of services and it is they whom the people should criticise. In fact, one of the plus points of the Bill is the separation of the Executive and the legislature. The people of Wales will better understand the way that the Assembly works and they will be brought closer to the Assembly.
	When I travel around Wales, I get the feeling that the National Assembly Government, Powys county council, Westminster and the European Parliament are not very popular. It is very difficult to have a legislature that is popular, but that does not necessarily mean that the people of Wales want to get rid of the Assembly. In my view, they want to promote the Assembly's powers so that it can better deal with the problems faced by the people and the nation of Wales.
	I have never thought of devolution as a system for becoming insular and apart from the United Kingdom. I believe that devolution is about developing systems to deliver services that are best suited to the area, and that those systems can be shared with other regions and nations in the United Kingdom so that they benefit as well. I was a little disappointed when the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) almost insinuated that people must be Conservatives to be Unionists or that people could not support devolution and be Unionists. I certainly am a Unionist, and I believe in the United Kingdom, which, by its very nature, is more than one nationsomething that we should all bear in mind.
	Welsh Liberal Democrats have always been a pro-devolution party, and we have consistently argued for a Welsh Seneddwe did so before 1998, and we do so today. We support a way forward that gives Wales more governance and more control over its own future, but, above all, good governance. Our party wholeheartedly endorses the recommendations of the Richard commission, which was effectively the most comprehensive constitutional consultation that was ever carried out in Wales. We support Lord Richard's view that Wales deserves a status equal to Scotland's, with powers over primary legislation, and that a larger Assembly of 80 Members is needed to cope with those extended powers. All the Members should be elected using a single-transferable-vote system.
	Listening to the hon. Member for Monmouth and considering the difficulties that the Assembly may face in dealing with further legislation, it seems to me that the experience of the Scottish Parliament should be taken into consideration. With in excess of 120 Members, they find that all their committee time is taken up with legislation and that it is very difficult to carry out the necessary scrutiny and policy development.
	Of course, it is typical of the Government to embark on a lengthy and costly consultation at taxpayers' expense only to ignore the expert advice. Such things can be said of the current consultation on the restructuring of the police force in Wales.

Ian Lucas: Just as a point of clarity, will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the Richard commission was set up by a Labour-Liberal coalition in the Welsh Assembly Government and that it was the price of the Liberals going into coalition?

Roger Williams: I do not know whether it was the price of the Liberals going into coalition, but it was certainly a great virtue. Setting up the Richard commission was a great advance in the understanding of devolution in Wales, because it gave lots of people the opportunity to participate and to be consulted. Having set up the commission with the Labour Assembly Government's agreement, more consideration should have been given to it, as it was certainly a very expensive exercise.

Cheryl Gillan: I presume that the hon. Gentleman would agree that the introduction of the complicated process of Orders in Council was a surprise to Lord Richard and his commission. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps it would be better to allow the fledgling Assembly that is facing difficulties in the House today to develop and to absorb the separation of the Executive from the legislature before overburdening it with the complex Orders-in-Council procedure that very few people seem to understand?

Roger Williams: I agree with the hon. Lady is one respect, namely, that the Orders-in-Council procedure is unnecessarily complicated. The Assembly will need some time to get to grips with the separation of the Executive from the legislature, but a commitment should have been given to follow the Richard commission's recommendation to move towards full legislative powers by 2011.
	We want to give politicians in Wales the powers to make the decisions that will shape the future of Wales, without having to respond to the diktats of Whitehall. We want to give the people of Wales the opportunity to hold those politicians to account. Instead of that, the Bill contains a detailed, empire-building plan for the Secretary of State, under which Wales will not be governed by sound constitutional principles, but by the mood and whim of its ruler. What we are witnessing is the making of a self-proclaimed king of Wales. I have some experience of that in my constituency, where Richard Booth proclaimed himself king of Hay, and I have some understanding of a regal coup when I see one, but the Secretary of State is taking powers that are completely out of proportion and certainly unnecessary.
	The truth is that Labour is split on devolution and always has been. That is why it gave birth to an emasculated Assembly in 1999, instead of a fully fledged Parliament. Six years on, Labour's devolution child may have been finally allowed to walk, but it has been placed in such powerful restrainers that it does so through no strength of its own. Indeed, under the Government's current proposals, the Welsh Assembly will be little more than a poodle on a retractable lead, held firmly in the Secretary of State's grip.
	The Welsh Liberal Democrats want the Assembly to be set free of Westminster meddling on devolved issues, so that it is capable of doing what is right for the interests of the people of Wales, not what is right for the Welsh Labour party. On the basis of our pro-devolution stance alone, the Government will have our support on Second Reading, as it is only reasonable to give everyone the opportunity to have a mature and open discussion about how Wales should move forward. However, let us be clear that we fundamentally disagree with many provisions in the Bill, such as the Orders in Council procedure, the Secretary of State's role, the trigger mechanism for the referendum, the electoral system and the Assembly's size, to name but a few. We will table a series of amendments during proceedings on the Bill to turn the Welsh Assembly into what we believe it should bea Welsh Senedd with primary law-making powers.

Cheryl Gillan: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but on the basis of what he has just said I invite him to join me in the Lobby tonight to vote for our reasoned amendment. As I have made very clear, we are not opposed to everything in the Billwe want to work constructively with the Government on building on what the Assembly has achieved already and improving itand the hon. Gentleman has just articulated the very reason for my reasoned amendment. We do not intend to vote against the Bill on Second Reading, but if what he has just said is Liberal party policy, I invite him and his hon. Friends to join us in the Lobby tonight.

Roger Williams: We will not vote to decline the Bill a Second Reading and we will not vote with the Conservatives on their reasoned amendment because we believe that the Bill has enough structure to be improved, so that we can move towards the image and symbol that we believe the Welsh Senedd can be for the Welsh people.

Wayne David: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether he is in favour of the Assembly having tax-raising powers?

Roger Williams: I will come to that later in my speech.
	Despite the extensive and costly consultation by the Richard commission, the only solution that the Welsh Labour party came up with to move Wales forward was to turn to the Secretary of State's other hat as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Is that lack of fresh thinking proof that his dual role is starting to take its toll? We cannot find anywhere other than Northern Ireland where Orders in Council exist or any example where they have worked well.
	The Orders in Council set a precedent for political interference in a formal constitutional process by putting in the Secretary of State as doorkeeper to the new legislative initiatives. His party might hold high hopes of being in power for ever, but surely the role of any sensible politician in the devolved nation is to ensure that the long-term interest of Wales is secured above and beyond ephemeral political victories. To misunderstand that is fundamentally to misunderstand the nature of devolution. Perhaps Wales Office staff should also write a memo on devolution for the Secretary of State's attention. I understand that such a memo has been sent to all other central Government offices.
	I would like to say a few words about part 5, which deals with finance. We welcome the setting up of a Welsh Consolidated Fund. That will bring more scrutiny and accountability to the finances of the Welsh Assembly and enable Welsh Assembly Members better to engage in the issues of probity and value for money. As the running costs of the Welsh Assembly and the Secretary of State for Wales will be deducted from the Welsh block grant before being put into the Welsh Consolidated Fund, will the Auditor General for Wales be able to investigate and comment on the expenditure of the Wales Office? This money comes directly out of the Wales block grant.
	During the Bill's consideration in Committee, we also wish to consider the Barnett formula, which has been mentioned before. It was set up in 1978 and has been updated on a regular population-related basis. The 1978 element still remains and, since then, the population of Scotland has fallen in absolute terms as well as relative to the populations of England and Wales, while the Welsh population has risen. Although it has fallen in terms of England, it has risen substantially in terms of Scotland. This is no way to continue to fund the devolved Assemblies and Parliament and it would have been good if the Government had taken the opportunity to address this anachronism and anomaly that even Lord Barnett now says is inappropriate.
	The Welsh Assembly does not have the powers to vary taxation that the Scottish Parliament has, so would the Government consider including in any referendum the opportunity for the Welsh people to express an opinion on that issue? Income tax-varying powers have been difficult to utilise in Scotland, but it may be that Wales should have powers over corporation tax or the unified business rate to encourage the economic development in Wales that still lags behind that in England. It would be interesting to hear the Government's view on these matters.
	The Liberal Democrats will certainly support the Bill's Second Reading. However, there is much work to be done in Committee, so that the people of Wales will have confidence that the Welsh Assembly has the necessary powers to guide the delivery of services for which it is responsible.

Mark Tami: I, too, welcome the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) to her new job on the Opposition Front Bench. I also express my sorrow at the loss of Lord Merlyn-Rees and Lord StratfordTony Bankswho was a good friend. He was missed when he left this House, and Parliament will certainly miss him. He was a great character, and we really lack such people. It is a very sad day.
	I welcome the Bill which, in the main, strikes the right balance between building on the existing settlement and addressing at least some of the problems that have arisen since devolution. However, on some issues, I would have liked it to go further. We should recognise that the Assembly is a new institution. Although there is always a temptation and, for some, a desire to run before one can walk, it is important that the Assembly establishes itself in the minds and the hearts of the people of Wales. If devolution is to be a process, the process must have the support of the people at every stage. For that reason, I do not believe that we can have a pre-defined time scale for any change to, or enhancement of, the Assembly's powers. Equally, the people of Wales may well decide that the process has gone as far as it should. I therefore welcome the provision in the Bill for a two-thirds majority for the sanctioning of a referendum in respect of primary powers, although I cannot see the provision being used in the short or probably the medium term.
	The system of Orders in Council strikes the right balance, with the aim of providing the Assembly with a mechanism to modify, or address, issues not covered by statute within devolved areas while retaining the sovereignty of Parliament and clearly not extending to affecting primary legislation in non-devolved areas.
	I recognise that many speakers have referred to the pre-legislative scrutiny of Orders in Council and the process of how they will be considered in the House. I do not intend to go into detail on that, but hon. Members have already made it clear that the Welsh Affairs Select Committee has already considered the issue. I am sure that proposals will be made to bring forward ideas in that regard. The separation of the Executive from the legislature is a sensible change and it seems to have been welcomed on all sides. It mirrors what we have seen in local government.
	Unlike Lord Richard, I do not believe that there is a requirementor more to the point, public appetite or acceptancefor an increase in the number of Assembly Members from 60 to 80. There will clearly be an increased work load and increased hours, but it is fair to say that there is scope to accommodate that.

Hywel Williams: I think that many of us share the hon. Gentleman's views on the Assembly's work load, but has he considered the difficulty of staffing Committees when many of the 60 Members will be part of the Government or deputies? Is it a practical proposition to run Committees in such circumstances?

Mark Tami: I accept that it is a problem and that it will take imaginative work to come up with a clear solution. However, one solution would be for the Assembly to sit for longer than it does at the moment, and there is scope for that. Two Members sit here as well as in the Assembly, and they can obviously do that.
	Much attention has centred on the proposals in the Bill to end the ridiculous situation of dual candidacy in Assembly elections. It is important to build on the Assembly settlement, but we must address its failings, and dual candidacy is one of the biggest failings. Following the last Assembly election, many people asked me how candidates who stood at the election and were defeatedand, in many cases, defeated by a country milecould find themselves sitting in the Assembly, claiming not only to represent constituents but having equal status with the people who defeated them. How would we feel if a third of this Chamber were made up candidates that had stood against us and lost?
	As has already been pointed out, all four of the list Members in north Wales were defeated at the ballot box. Three of them stood in the same seatthe infamous Clwyd, Westthat has been referred to many times today. All of them were defeated by Alun Pugh, who was the only candidate from a major party who stood a chance of not retaining his seat. All the other candidates were No. 1 on their list. That is farcical. I do not know about north Wales, but they would not have come up with such a system even in North Korea. Even Lord Richard made it clear that something was wrong and did not make sense.
	That is bad enough, but the problem does not end there. Once getting into the assembly via the back door, these characters spend much of their time cherry-picking issues and targeting seats that they or their party are looking at for future elections. Unlike in Scotland, there is no protocol under which they have to inform properly elected Assembly Members that they are visiting their constituencies.

David Jones: What does the hon. Gentleman consider to be the legitimate role of a regional Member of the Assembly?

Mark Tami: We need to examine that matter. I accept that the hon. Gentleman has experience of the situation because although he was not elected on the list first time around, his predecessor decided to spend more time somewhere else. I am not sure whether he was the next one on the list, but that shows that we have a fairly crazy situation. I make no criticism of the hon. Gentleman or the job that he did, but the system is fundamentally flawed.
	For some unknown reason, we provide additional list Members with the same amount for staffing and office costs as properly elected Members. Let us be honestI think that the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) went some way towards saying thiswho actually gets up in the morning and says, I know, I'm going to write to my additional list Member today about this matter.? I would hazard a guess that the number of such people is pretty small.

Cheryl Gillan: May I establish that the hon. Gentleman said that Members elected on the list system are not proper Members and that he is putting forward a serious proposition to reduce the salaries and allowances of Members elected on the list system? If that is not a proposition to give the Labour party an electoral advantage, I am not sure what would be.

Mark Tami: I certainly did not say that such Members should have a lower salary. I said that they do a different job, and I shall explain what I mean.
	If list members are in any doubt about what their role should be, they have only to consult Leanne Wood's magic memo, or the additional list Members' bible, as it is known. She set out with great clarity her golden rules on how list Members should abuse the system: avoid casework at all costs; misuse the staffing allowance to benefit the party; locate the office not for the needs of the people, but in the interests of the party; and, of course, attend events only if it is in the interests of the partyif in doubt, send a pro forma letter of rejection. There is a problem with the system. List Members of any partyeven Labour list Members, if there were anywould be drawn to that approach because the system allows and even encourages them to behave in such a manner. The system is wrong and should be changed.
	I would like the Bill and the Assembly to go further and define the role of list Members. They should have exactly the same status as other Members within the Assembly, but without an unchecked roaming remit outside. We will have to return to the matter if that abuse continues to such an extent.

Cheryl Gillan: Does the hon. Gentleman think that the problem that he is outlining regarding Miss Wood and her operations would be solved if people standing in constituencies were allowed to stand on lists for other regions?

Mark Tami: No. That would make the situation even more complicated and people would not understand what on earth was going onthey fail to understand the situation at the moment.
	As my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) said, list Members should be elected on a properly proportional second vote. In the same way in which people do not understand how losers become winners, they do not understand how a party can top a poll yet not get any of its candidates elected. In the 2003 election, for example, Plaid topped the poll in mid and west Wales. It received 51,000 votes on the second vote and received one additional list Member. Labour came second with 46,000 votes, but got no additional list Members. The Tories were back on 35,000 votes19 per cent. of the voteand got three additional list Members. The Lib Dems were not far behind the Tories, but got no additional list Members. A party that got less than a fifth of the second vote got three quarters of the seats. That is obviously a very democratic system[Interruption.] The system is fundamentally flawed. I used to support proportional representation but, like an ex-smoker, I have seen the light and discovered the problems that it throws up.

Roger Williams: rose

Cheryl Gillan: rose

Mark Tami: I am sorry, but I will not give way because I have gone over my time.
	The Bill is a step in the right direction, but we need to go further. I am sure that it will get its Second Reading tonight.

David Jones: The most charitable criticism that one might make of the Bill is that it is premature. Perhaps a less charitable criticism would be that it is a devious measure designed significantly to extend the powers of the Welsh Assembly to give it a primarily law-making competence without first obtaining the consent of the people of Wales in a referendum. Furthermore, one could say that the Bill's aim is to bolster the Labour party's position in the Assembly.
	It is worth looking back briefly at the history of devolution in Wales to date. As other hon. Members have said, it must not be forgotten that devolution was voted for in the 1997 referendum by the narrowest possible margin. On a poll of just over 50 per cent. of the Welsh electorate, just over 25,000 people voted in favour of devolution. The majority throughout Wales was just over 6,000. In other words, almost 75 per cent. of the Welsh electorate was either opposed to devolution, or insufficiently persuaded of its merits to vote in favour of it.

Hywel Williams: Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House the proportion of the electorate of Clwyd, West that voted for him and other parties? Did he receive a majority vote?

David Jones: I am making the point that at the time of the 1997 referendum, a significant majority of the Welsh electorate was not in favour of the Assembly, or was insufficiently persuaded of its merits to vote for it.
	The Assembly is a fact of life, but one must also acknowledge that as far as many electors in Wales are concerned, the jury is still out on whether it has been beneficial to the people of Wales overall. Many people in Walesand, perhaps, on both sides of the Houseare extremely disappointed by the Assembly's performance to date. On health, especially, it has been a less-than-conspicuous success. Waiting lists and times in Wales are significantly longer than those in England. In my constituency, to cite just one, it is virtually impossible to find an NHS dentist. There is not a huge amount to crow about regarding the Assembly's success.
	The Secretary of State has acknowledged that there is no consensus in Wales on full primary legislative powers for the Assembly. On 15 June, he said:
	we will call a referendum only if there is a consensus for one. There is no consensus for one now, and it would be lost.[Official Report, 15 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 267.]
	More recently, he said that neither he nor the First Minister were
	in the business of calling referendums we are going to lose.
	I agree entirely with the Secretary of State that there is no consensus in Wales for further devolution. Clearly, there is no such consensus. It might therefore be expected that the Government would wait to allow the current devolution settlement to bed in and to start proving its worth before granting further legislative competence to the Assembly.
	The Secretary of State contends that what is proposed in the Bill under stage 2the Order in Council measuresdoes not amount to such a significant extension of the Assembly's powers to merit a referendum. He said today that a modest transfer of powers was involved. The validity of that view depends to a great extent on the way that the Order-in-Council procedure would be operated. We await much more detail in that respect.
	The more widely drafted the Orders in Council, the less modest the transfer. It is abundantly clear that Assembly measures made as a result of powers granted via Orders in Council might be used to amend, extend or even repeal Acts of Parliament. The power is significant and goes a considerable distance beyond what was initially envisaged at the time of the referendum in 1997.
	The White Paper, A Voice for Wales, made it clear that the Assembly's role would be to take over the administrative functions of the Secretary of State for Wales, its legislative functions being confined to the passing of secondary legislation. The Bill makes it clear that an Assembly measure may make any provision that could be made by an Act of Parliament. We therefore have what the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) described as a kind of salami slicing. There is an extension of primary legislative competence to the Welsh Assembly.
	Furthermore, once an Order in Council has conferred enhanced legislative powers in relation to a matter, the competence conferred will be of a continuing nature. The Assembly will be able to revisit those powers conferred by the original Orders in Council. That will amount essentially to a permanent transfer of legislative competence in a large number of areas. As the years pass, so that competence will grow.

Roger Williams: It is my understanding that Orders in Council refer only to matters that are already devolved to the Assembly, so in effect they are limited.

David Jones: That is not correct at all. The Order-in-Council procedure will add extra matters to fields in which devolution already exists, so the devolutionary powers will be extended. The purpose of the Order in Council procedure is clear: to devolve quasi-primary legislative powers to the Assembly without the need for a referendum.
	That was recognised by Lord Richard when he gave evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee. He said:
	Let's be frank about it, it is a device to avoid having to come to Westminster and ask for primary powers to be formally devolved. It is quite an interesting device . . . Westminster can say they have not devolved primary legislative powers, but depending on the way in which the Order in Council procedure is used, it could in effect be a concealed grant of almost a direct legislative competence down to Cardiff.
	What the proposals amount to is a kind of devolutionary creep. They are a stealthy means of extending more and more powers to the Assemblyconsiderably beyond what was envisaged in 1997 and what the Welsh people voted for in that year through a tortuous and opaque route of Orders in Council. Worryingly enough, the Orders in Council might be made with the minimum of debate in Parliament. We might be talking about one and a half hours of discussion in Standing Committee.

Cheryl Gillan: Is it not a fact that the Secretary of State is aware of the sleight of hand that he is pulling off? On 8 December, the date on which the Bill was published without any pre-legislative scrutiny, he said that the Bill would
	give the Assembly more powers, more opportunity and more scope to make decisions.
	If that is not increasing the competency of the Assembly, I do not know what is.

David Jones: My hon. Friend is entirely right. The Presiding Officer of the Assembly, Lord Elis-Thomas, recently said that the obtaining of Orders in Council will be nothing more than a formality. Of course, he is right. It is inconceivable so long as there are Labour Administrations in Westminster and in Cardiff that a request for an Order in Council would be refused. When there are Governments of different colours in Westminster and Cardiff, as will certainly happen one day, it would be virtually impossible for Westminsterfor the Secretary of State for Walesto refuse a request without triggering a constitutional crisis.
	It is extraordinary that any responsible Government should seek to promote a piece of legislation that has the seeds of constitutional strife built into it. If the Government consider that further devolved power should be given to the Assembly, they should confer those powers in a more honest and open manner: through primary legislation preceded by a referendum of the Welsh people. The Government have recognised, rightly, that the Welsh people probably have no stomach for more devolution. However, that might not be the case, so why not ask them now? The Secretary of State should show sufficient respect for the constitutional conventions of this country and for the people of Wales to ask them whether they want the Assembly to have more powers. The Orders-in-Council procedure is devious and dishonest. That is why the reasoned amendment is absolutely right.
	Similarly, the proposals for a referendum at some undetermined stage in the future are wholly bizarre. It seems extraordinary that the Government should place in a Bill provisions that may never be triggered. No doubt the Government hope that the presence in the Bill of arrangements for a future referendum will engender a feeling of inevitabilitya feeling that primary powers will be transferred come what may, and that it is a case of when, not whether.
	The proposals on electoral arrangements deserve particular condemnation. The Government have suggested that the present arrangement, whereby defeated constituency candidates can obtain a seat in the Assembly via the regional list,
	devalues the integrity of the electoral system in the eyes of the public and acts as a disincentive to voting in constituency elections.[Official Report, 15 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 264.]
	No evidence of that sort was put before the Welsh Affairs Committeein fact, quite the contrary. The Electoral Commission said that that was not the case and so did the academics. The only evidence presented was hearsay evidence offered by the First Minister and the Secretary of State for Wales.
	The case constantly cited in support of their contention is that of my constituency, Clwyd, West, where in 2003 four of the five candidates were elected to the Assembly, three through the regional list. Several points may be made about that contention. It was always a foreseeable consequence of the original devolution settlement that more than one candidate for a constituency would be elected, some through the regional list. That was inherent in the devolution settlement. The case of Clwyd, West was extreme, but it should not have been unanticipatedit was always perfectly obvious that something of the sort would happen. Dr. Roger Scully of Aberystwyth university said in his evidence to the Select Committee:
	Frankly, if the Government did not realise when it brought in this White Paper that that would happen, they should have done, they were negligent in not realising that.
	The reason why the Government wish to amend the arrangements is fairly obvious: Labour has no regional list Members at the moment. It is clear that the presence of regional Members vying for constituency work must be something of a nuisance to the sitting constituency Members. Clearly, they are concerned that an effective and energetic regional Member will overshadow or cast in a poor light an ineffective constituency Member. However, that, too, was always perfectly foreseeable, and even if the proposals in the Bill were adopted, the position would remain the same: regional Members would continue to be able to vie with constituency Members in terms of constituency activity.
	I suspect that, in due course, the standing orders that we have heard about will be used to attenuate still further the role of regional Members. I think that regional Members will find that certain types of work are out of bounds. It is even possible that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) suggested, allowances will be attenuated. It is clear that the Bill is intended to bolster Labour's position in the constituencies at the expense of regional Members. That is a reprehensible measure.

Wayne David: Does the hon. Gentleman accept the simple point that it is morally unjustifiable for losers to become winners? It is a simple as that.

David Jones: That was always a perfectly foreseeable consequence of the devolutionary settlement. It is extraordinary that, only a few years down the line, the Labour party is crying foul, when it was obvious that it would run into that sort of difficulty.
	I move on to the question of the north Wales regional committee. The Bill makes no special provision for such a committee. The Government, who are highly south Wales centric, clearly do not appreciate the extent to which Cardiff is both geographically and spiritually distant from the rest of Wales, particularly north Wales. The provision for a north Wales regional committee was sensible and I suggest that it should be perpetuated. It is a matter of great regret that the Bill contains no such provision.
	The only part of the Bill that is highly desirable is the separation of the Executive from the legislature. Since its inception, the Assembly's corporate structure has encouraged too cosy a relationship between Ministers and Committee members. I knowI speak from experiencethat it is much more difficult to hold the Government to account if the relevant Minister is also a member of the same Committee. The provision set out in the Bill is entirely welcomeI support it in fulland it should have been incorporated from the outset. The corporate model was a failure.
	The one welcome portion of the legislation does not compensate for the general unacceptability of the Bill. This is an exercise in the underhand extension of powers to the Assembly without the authority and legitimacy conferred by a referendum of the Welsh people. The proposed electoral arrangements constitute a disgraceful device aimed at bolstering Labour's position in the Assembly. All in all, the Bill in its present form is unwelcome and I wholeheartedly support the reasoned amendment.

Jessica Morden: Given that we are running out of time, I shall make only one specific point that has not been mentioned so far.
	I support the Bill, and I support what it will keep. It will keep the foundation of the partnership that the Assembly has been able to build with people and organisations. For example, there are statutory duties to establish and maintain a partnership council with local government, to publish a voluntary sector scheme and to work with business organisations.
	I want to raise a concern concerning our trade union colleagues and the requirement to consult business, which does not extend to organisations that represent employees. This cannot be right. The Welsh Assembly Government consult trade unions and it would be incumbent on their successors to do the same. I further argue that the imbalance between the requirements for the local government voluntary sector and business organisations must be addressed in our consideration of the proposed legislation. Unions and business play a key role in this development in Wales, and the Bill does not take enough account of the need for strong working relations and consultative mechanisms between employee and employer organisations.
	The Bill contains a requirement for a schemes to be published for local government and for the voluntary sector, but not for business and trade unions. That should be rectified. I should be grateful if my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would consider sympathetically an amendment on that issue.

Nigel Evans: I shall make only a short contribution to the debate, because I know that a number of Labour Members also want to speak.
	When I heard the Secretary of State extol the virtues of everything that the Government had done for Wales, including creating the post of Secretary of State for Wales, I bore it in mind that they decided to merge the post of Secretary of State, making it a half job, which clearly it is not. The only disagreement that I had with the former Leader of the Opposition was when he decided to have the shadow post of Secretary of State for Wales outside the shadow Cabinet. I thought that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was wrong, and that Wales deserved a better status. I am delighted that the new leader of the Conservative party has decided to put the post of the shadow Secretary of State for Wales back into the shadow Cabinet.
	I am delighted also that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) has secured that position. I know that she will enjoy the role, as I did when I undertook it. The people of Wales will take my hon. Friend very much to heart as she travels around and discovers some of the parts of Wales that I did not get round to, despite the fact that I lived in Wales for about 30 years. I wish my hon. Friend well in her position. She has one great advantage that I did not have when I did the job, which is that she has three Conservative Members in Wales sitting with her and supporting her. They are a tremendous addition to our team. They are all live wires, and they will make a fantastic contribution.
	I want to make a couple of points. First, everyone has spoken about proportional representation. I am not a fan of PRI am a first-past-the-post man. I have always believed in that system, and think that it is the right way to proceed. Clearly, it has worked against us in Wales. As I said, we had no Welsh MPs for eight years, even though we were the second party of Wales, given the percentage of support that we received from the Welsh people. I am not a Lib DemI do not believe in an electoral system that favours my party. Either it is right or it is not. If we are to understand the situation, we must accept that the electoral system that Labour Members are all rubbishing today is the one that their party introduced at the time of devolution. It is their system, and if it is wrong, they were wrong to introduce it. We were not hammering for it. During the passage of the first Government of Wales Bill, we did not say what a wonderful electoral system it was. Quite the reverse, even though it benefited us.

Julie Morgan: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, without the list system, the Conservatives would have won only one seat in both the first and second Assembly elections? Does he acknowledge that, in fact, the Labour party was generous in creating the list system, as it enabled the Conservatives to become more active in Wales?

Nigel Evans: I cannot begin to tell the hon. Lady how grateful we were to the Labour party for creating a system that it now wishes to alter. However, as I said, I am not a Lib Dem. If I were, I would have argued for PR, perhaps for Wales and Scotland, but not for England. We could gerrymander to see what system would benefit us, but I shall leave that to the Lib Dems. If, as has been said, the Labour party wishes to review arrangements and introduce a first-past-the-post system, we should at least consider such a proposal, because by meddling with the electoral system it will not resolve the problems which, it says, are the result of the list system. Those problems include list Members or regional Members setting up offices in other people's patches where they think they may do better in a future first-past-the-post election. That problem, however, will continue to exist unless the Welsh Assembly do something about it. The solution needs more thought, because the system is being changed for the wrong reasons. Let us be honestthe Government think that they have made a mistake, but their proposal fails to correct it. We should therefore take a little more time to look at the problem again.
	I commend the powerful speech of the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams). There will be problemsthere are no two ways about it. The last referendum on regional government was in the north-east of England, and it could not have gone down the pan in a bigger way. Even I was surprised at the size of the majority against the Government proposal but, having tried to give England a voice, they did not walk away from such a proposal. The fact is, the systems that they have introduced in Scotland and Wales, together with the changes that they propose to introduce in Wales, will make the situation worse. Far more legislation will affect England alone, but Members from Scotland and Wales will hold sway. The West Lothian question is not dead and it will not go away. It must be addressed, but the problem has been made worse by the Bill.

Dominic Grieve: My hon. Friend may have noted the suggestion from a Government Member that list AMs should receive less expenses subsidy than constituency AMs. I wonder whether Government Members propose to extend that arrangement to themselves if they have less work after further devolution.

Nigel Evans: That is what I thought as well, when I heard the argument. It would set a dangerous precedent to take account of the hours and who does what, and to create two-tier or two-status Welsh Assembly Members. If that happened in the Welsh Assembly, somebody might suggest examining what MPs are doing at Westminster and whether some have lesser jobs because of devolution. Somebody somewhere might devise a system for taking that into account.
	Finally, I shall say something about the Orders in Council, the referendum and giving the people of Wales a voice. That is why the Welsh Assembly was created, and Members have reminded us how close it came to not going ahead. However, there was a thin majority. I was on the Assembly referendum night programme and I remember that it came down to the final result. Peter Snow predicted that the people of Wales had voted no, but then the Carmarthen result came in and it was 11:11very tight indeed.
	The settlement is where we currently are, and to use a device proposed in the Bill to salami-slice legislative powers in favour of the Assembly in everything but name is dishonest. If that is what the Government wantand the Secretary of State said that he wanted the Welsh Assembly to have primary legislative powerslet us be adult and honest about it. Let us devise a question for the people of Wales and put it to them. If the Government are not prepared to do that in respect of primary legislative powers and still want to use the device of Orders in Council, let us at least put to the people of Wales the salami-slicing mechanism that would be used, and find out what they want. To do it dishonestly, without asking the people of Wales whether that is what they want, is not right.
	Contrary to what the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) said, had we gone down that route in the first place and offered the people of Wales the same powers as the Scottish Parliament has, I believe the people of Wales would have voted no, particularly as regards the tax-varying powers. That is why the Government offered something less. It is wrong to give the people of Wales what the Government are offering, without giving them a voice. I thought we all believed in democracy. If we do, let us back it with our votes.

Albert Owen: I, too, pay tribute to Merlyn Rees and Tony Banks, two people whose company I thoroughly enjoyed. Both were passionate men. Merlyn Rees was passionate about his country, Wales, and when we talked, he always made reference to Anglesey. In Tony Banks, we had a passionate football supporter, who always ridiculed me about football, although I am a proud Evertonian. We always had a laugh and a joke about it. Both gentlemen will be sadly missed.
	I have already welcomed the shadow Secretary of State to her position, although I am disappointed that she has tabled a reasoned amendment. I see no reason for it. She saysI think she contradicts herself in thisthat she will support Second Reading, so let us have a proper, mature debate in Committee about the issues that have been raised. We have plenty of time to do it. The hon. Lady even said she would support the programme motion, so it would be more reasonable for her to join us in the Lobby tonight, instead of pressing an unreasonable amendment.
	I welcome the Bill in its entirety as a positive step towards devolution. I believe in devolution. I always have. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), I have passionately supported it for many years. In 1997, I and many Members put forward what we believed to be the best for Wales and there was a narrow margin in favour. Things have moved on and the Bill reflects that, which is why I am proud to support it. The Opposition have made remarks about gerrymandering, but not one of them has said how the Bill would benefit the Labour party. It does not.
	The leader of the Conservatives in the Welsh Assembly has said that the proposal to change the electoral system is rigged in favour of the Labour party, but I argue that the current system is already rigged in favour of parties such as the Conservative party. Two wrongs do not make a right, so let us debate the matter maturely. If the Conservative party is serious about fairness, let us change the system and make it fairer.

Stephen Crabb: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the evidence on the electoral arrangements provided to the   Welsh Affairs Committee by academics and the Electoral Commission, which made the point that regardless of whether the changes benefit the Labour party, the perception that they are motivated by partisan interest is enough to turn off people from participating in the electoral process, which is a serious worry?

Albert Owen: That is a different point. Nearly every Opposition Member who has spoken has said that the changes are gerrymandering, but that is not the case. The current system is rigged, and the dual ballot paper confuses people when they cast their votes. In 1999, the Labour party picked up some 34 per cent. of the vote in the second ballot in north Wales, but it got no seats, which was grossly unfair. Just as we are amending the Assembly's corporate status in the Bill, we should amend the electoral system. If we are serious about proportional representation, let us make the system proportional.
	It would be fairer to separate the second ballot paper from the first, in which case people would elect the Member whom they want to represent them in the constituency in the first ballot and top that up in the second ballot by voting for the party that they want to represent them. The system was rigged to help minority parties and independents, but it does not, because the outcome has not been that which was first envisaged. I urge the Minister to address that problem in his winding-up speech.

Hywel Williams: rose

Albert Owen: I will take an intervention, but it must be brief, because other hon. Members want to speak.

Hywel Williams: The hon. Gentleman said that people are confused, but I refer him to the evidence given to the Welsh Affairs Committee by the Electoral Commission, an independent body that has undertaken careful research, that people are not confused.

Albert Owen: I am not aware of the research to which the hon. Gentleman referred, but if he tells me what it is, I shall read it. On the ground, I know that people are confused because they have told me so. As my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said, when people vote for a party that comes top of the poll, they do not get the Member for whom they voted. I am not suggesting that the minority parties do not need assistance. Some hon. Members have argued that it would be unfair to move away from a dual mandate, but I say that the dual ballot paper is also unfair and that we should examine both systems equally.
	Finally, the hon. Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones) mentioned regional committees, which have been wrongly omitted from the Bill. I believe in real devolutionnot the transfer of powers from London to Cardiff bay, but the transfer of powers from Cardiff bay to Colwyn bay and to Cemaes bay in my constituency. One of the purposes of devolution was to bring politics closer to the people of Wales, which has not happened. One of the reasons why it has not happened is because the regional committees are too weak and have become nothing more than talking shops. They talk openly about interesting subjects, but they do not do anything about them. I want the Bill to strengthen the regional dimension in Wales through real devolution to the regions, which could be done by strengthening the regional committees to include open debates and decision making or by the scrutiny committees visiting the regions, taking evidence and examining regional issues.
	The hon. Member for Clwyd, West mentioned that many people in north Wales feel isolated, which is because of the distance between politics in Cardiff and the rest of Walesin particular, the areas on the periphery. The Minister represents a constituency on the periphery of Wales, so I hope that he recognises the fear that politics is becoming too Cardiff-central. The only way in which to address the situation is to devolve power out to the regions through a mechanism such as the regional committees.

Hywel Williams: I welcome the Bill, which, for the faint-hearted, does not do a great deal as regards stage two powers and, for people such as me who are enthusiasts, does a great deal as regards stage three powers. In that sense, the Secretary of State is riding two horses, and he is to be congratulated. There is a great need for reform. I am afraid that in some quarters the Assemblythe Cynulliadhas gained the name of Cynlleied, or so little, because many people are disappointed with the level of powers that it has.
	I commend the report of the Welsh Affairs Committee to hon. Members. It contains a great deal of interesting evidence that will illuminate the debates in Committee and on Report and Third Reading. One matter that the Committee investigated was the referendum. At question 99, I asked Lord Richard why we should go for stage two of the Order-in-Council procedures, which are, as everyone accepts, fairly complicated and convoluted, instead of going straight for stage three. He replied that that question was not for him but for the Secretary of State. We received a response from the Secretary of State earlier, when he said of the referendum, I know it would fail. I do not know that it would fail; indeed, I feel that it would succeed. We in Plaid Cymru have confidence that people in Wales would see the virtue of having proper powers for the Assembly. It is often said that the Assembly needs to bed in. That is a vain hope given the limited powers that it has at present. It cannot give the people of Wales a proper service because it is disabled in that it cannot pass the simplest of laws on its own account.
	I should like to correct the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik), who recruited Plaid Cymru into his party of people against having a referendum at all. We are in favour of having a referendum and would not support his point of view.
	Pre-legislative scrutiny has been commended as a way of looking at Orders in Council. Having taken part in that procedure, I have to say that it has been successful. For example, the Welsh Grand Committee has met to consider legislation and the Welsh Affairs Committee has met jointly with committees from the Welsh Assembly. However, it is significant that those joint meetings have on the whole concerned non-controversial matters. There is a danger that the procedure could be, to use the Secretary of State's phrase, Redwoodised if there was a difference of opinion between the Government in Cardiff and the Government down here in London. That would also be a danger if we had a Secretary of State who is fundamentally at odds with the Welsh Assembly Government. The discussion process in respect of Orders in Council could go badly wrong. The 60-day delay might be used by an unsympathetic Secretary of State to slow down the process and entangle it in undue legal procedures in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) outlined. I refer the House to page 38 of the Welsh Affairs Committee's report and to paragraph 131, in which, after consideration, the Committee, which is of course cross-party, would not recommend that the Secretary of State act as a filter.
	Another thing to draw to the attention of the House is the Salisbury convention, whereby if a matter is in a manifesto it is not opposed in certain circumstances. I asked the Secretary of State about that when he was giving evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee and I also asked the First Minister. Interestingly, the First Minister said that if the matter was in an Assembly manifesto it would not be opposed under the terms of the convention, but if it was a matter in the manifesto of one of the smaller parties, which had magically joined the other smaller parties, the issue would have to appear in each of the parties' manifestos beforehand, which would of course create a difficulty for smaller parties.
	Rather more interestingly, the Salisbury convention is after all only a convention, so an individual Member, a Committee, the Welsh Assembly Government or the Welsh Assembly itself, with the approval of the Secretary of State and of this House, might commend an Order in Council but it might be refused down the corridor. Perhaps I am over-egging the pudding, but that might be so. I was therefore interested to hear the comments of the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), the Father of the House, who seemed to be commending the procedure and to be championing the cause of the other place, possibly in the face of the wishes of this place and of Cardiff.
	There has been a great deal of discussion about the proposed changes to the electoral system. The hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) made a significant point in saying that the evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee concerned the appearance of partisanshipthat that is how it would be interpreted by people voting in elections in Wales. I will not go into the theology of proportional representation, but it is significant that it was the Government's party that introduced the d'Hondt system that has led to the difficulties. Labour Back Benchers should not protest too much, because it was their Government who brought that in.
	The response of Glyn Mathias and the Electoral Commission was interesting. I refer Members to question 114 in the evidence. Glyn Mathias and the Electoral Commission, which is a properly independent body, said that there was no evidence in favour of change. However, when the Secretary of State and the First Minister appeared before us they asserted that there was great evidence and argument in favour of change. As far as I can see, they were assertions rather than evidence.
	Much has been made of international comparisons. One interesting comparison is the system that might have been adopted in Quebec, where additional members would be required to stand in seats, which would subject them to the rigours of proper competition face to face with another member in a constituency, as well as standing for the list. I have great concerns about comments made by Labour Members on having two classes of Assembly Members. That is very dangerous and should be resisted as much as possible. I do not think that it would be possible to go down the Quebec route, but it is not a matter of one choice or another. We should look at this creatively so that the reputation of the electoral system in Wales is sustained and we get the best to represent the people of Wales in the Assembly. That is what this should be about; it should not be about real or imagined party advantage.
	I would like to ask other questions, but I will not detain the House, apart from referring to my earlier question about where list Members should locate their offices. Should they be banned from working in constituencies where they might subsequently stand?

Elfyn Llwyd: Nonsense.

Hywel Williams: My hon. Friend says that it is nonsense, and it clearly is convoluted nonsense.
	We have a system that could perhaps be fine-tuned in some ways, but I do not think that we should listen to the fears expressed by the Conservatives in particular. The Bill is something of a halfway houseit is slightly confused, and slightly confusing to somebut it represents a positive step towards what we consider to be the aim of this debate: proper powers for the Assembly.

Martin Caton: During the period before the 1997 general election I campaigned, within my party and outside it, for the creation of a powerful, accountable, democratic body to take over all the policy areas for which the then Welsh Office was responsible. I was secretary of the West Glamorgan campaign for a Welsh Assembly. I submitted a policy paper for the Welsh Labour party commission when it was gathering evidence to inform the devolution policy that we were to put to the people in the election. I called for the creation of an 80-Member Assembly with legislative powers over all devolved matters and limited tax-varying powerswhat we now call the Scottish model. I still believe that there is a practical and logical coherence in such a policy, but I am also convinced that had we put it to the country in the referendum of September 1997especially with the prospect of independent tax-raising powers for the Assemblywe would have lost the vote, and would probably have lost the chance of democratic devolution for another generation.
	It is with that dubious track record of judgment in this sphere, and with due humility, that I venture to comment on the next stage of what is clearly turning out to be a process rather than an event. Of course, we now have the advantage of six years of the Assembly doing its job on the basis of the Bill that we debated in 1997 and 1998. We also have the benefit of academic studies and reviews, and of inquiries by the Assembly itself and the Welsh Affairs Committee. Most significantly, I believe, we have the report of the Richard commission, which worked for a year assessing the adequacy of the current settlement and developing proposals for the future. As we all know now, Richard identified a fundamental weakness in the corporate structure of the Assemblywhat we called the local government model during our debate on the original Bill. On the basis of the evidence that it gathered, the commission also argued that the Assembly would not fulfil its full potential with the current limitations on its powers, and suggested that if those powers were extended, membership of the Assembly would have to be increased. At the same time, it identified problems with the additional-Member electoral system, which was created to deliver a degree of proportionality in the results of election to the Assembly.
	The commission's proposed solutions were legislation to create a separation between executive and legislative functions, a timetable for the transfer of primary legislative powers to the Assembly by 2011, and enlargement of the Assembly to 80 Members, all elected by means of the single transferable vote. I think I am alone on the Labour Benches, certainly today, in being able to say that I would have been happy if my party, in the Government and the Assembly, had welcomed those proposals and set about turning them into practice as quickly as possible. I know that I am in the minority among Welsh Labour Members, and perhaps even more so among rank-and-file Labour party members throughout Wales. I freely acknowledge that the Bill is a compromise. However, I do not agree with the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), who described it as such but also described it as very weak. I believe that it is a robust and workable compromise.
	When the Government produced the White Paper last June, I studied it and asked myself three basic questions. First, would it give the people of Wales more control over policy decisions that affect their daily lives? I believe that the answer is yes. Secondly, was it likely to improve the effectiveness of the National Assembly in delivering for the people of Wales? I believe that the answer is yes. Thirdly, would it put the brakes on any further progress towards democratic devolution? My answer to that is Definitely not: quite the opposite.
	Although the White Paper, and hence the Bill, did not propose the same solutions as the Richard commission in every instance, to a large extent they identified the same problems with the status quo: the corporate structure, the need for separation between legislative and scrutiny roles and executive roles, and the problems with the additional-Member system.
	Clearly, there are different solutions, but I do not have the time to discuss my concerns about the electoral proposals in the Bill. I think it would have been better to go for a single transferable vote system, but it is not true to say that democracy in Wales will end suddenly if these provisions are carried. We will still have a vibrant democracy and a proportional element. The Bill is worth supporting and I ask hon. Members to do so.

Julie Morgan: I strongly support devolution. I voted for it in 1979 and was disappointed when it was so overwhelmingly defeated in the first referendum. When I became a Member here, I was pleased to take part in a debate on the Government of Wales Act 1998. That was a great experience for a new Welsh Member. However, some of the confusion that arose during the passage of the Act is only now being corrected.
	I am pleased that there is almost universal support for getting rid of the corporate body status and for moving to a clearer division between the executive and the legislative functions. I support the moves to enhance the Assembly's powers and the methods in the Bill bring about the maximum change possible in terms of law-making powers with the minimal constitutional disruption.
	I support primary legislative powers for the Assembly, but what is proposed in the Bill is the best way forward at the moment with the option of a referendum in the future. I do not know whether a referendum could be won on the issue if it were held today. I could not hazard a guess. But if we have a referendum, we will spend time and effort arguing the issues, time and effort that could be better used to improve things for the people of Wales.
	Richard made the case for 80 Assembly Members and I supported most of the report, but the Bill is a practical way forward. It is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Caton) said, a compromise, but one around which I hope all pro-devolution parties can unite.
	The Bill's mechanism whereby powers can be conferred upon the Assembly on a case-by-case basis certainly maintains the involvement of Members of Parliament. The Conservatives are trying to make a case for opposing the Bill, but there is no reason at all for a referendum on these modest proposals.
	If we had had those Orders in Council already, there are many instances in which we could have moved quickly ahead in Wales when policies different from those here in Westminster were advocated. I am thinking particularly about smoking. I had a private Member's Bill on smoking and I know that the Welsh Assembly has supported in principle a total ban on smoking in all workplaces and public places. It voted in January 2003 to set up an all-party working party, and voted on 25 May 2005 for a ban. Yet as things stand, we are totally dependent on the health legislation going through this House before we are able to use the powers available to us in Wales that would result in a total ban.
	That is a good illustration of the practical way in which the Orders in Council procedure would enable us to do things in Wales without that being subject to a blocking process here and without taking up time on the Floor of the House. It is an example of the way in which Orders in Council could be used to ensure that what the Assembly and the people of Wales want to happen does take place. There are many similar practical examples.
	I am pleased to press for more powers for the Assembly, but I have been surprised at what it has been able to do with its existing powers. It is interesting to note that some trailblazing schemes that have been followed by the rest of the country were introduced without any legislative powers at all, such as free bus passes for pensioners. That scheme was introduced by my Assembly colleague, the Minister Sue Essex, and it is now being followed in England. Free prescriptions will have come in by the next Assembly elections, and I would not be surprised if that scheme were followed in other parts of the UK. The Scottish Executive are looking into it, and interest has been expressed in England. Many of these policies were introduced in the Assembly without the need for such legislative powers.
	It is disappointing that so many Opposition Members have failed to point out the Assembly's great achievements, a couple of which I have just mentioned. We needed primary legislation for the Children's Commissioner for Wales, and we need it for the commissioner for older people. That legislation, which is a world first, is going through the House of Lords at the moment and will shortly come to us. All such initiatives need primary legislation, but if the Bill had already been passed, we could have got this measure through without taking up time on the Floor of the House of Commons, thereby enabling other legislation to go through.
	In conclusion, as I said, I have always been a strong devolutionist and have always pressed for more powers for the Assembly. I believe that that is the right thing to do and that it is in the interests of the people of Wales. My constituents voted against an Assembly at the second referendum. I am not sure what they would do now if they could vote at a referendum, but I think that many more would vote for an Assembly now than did during the second referendum. There is a big job ahead in terms of showing what devolution can do, and has done, for Wales, but the case has been made for increased powers for the Assembly and the Bill is the best way of proceeding.

Nia Griffith: It gives me great pleasure to speak on this Bill, as I know that it would have gladdened the heart of one of my predecessors: that great Welsh statesman, the right hon. James Griffiths, who, in the 1940sway ahead of his parliamentary colleagueswas keen on recognising Wales as a separate political unit and on establishing a Wales Office. Eventually, he influenced opinion and was instrumental in devising Labour's Welsh policy to that effect during the 1959 election. He pledged a future Government to the inclusion of a Secretary of State for Wales in the Cabinet, and to specifying the devolution of administration.
	When that future Government was eventually elected in 1964, Jim Griffiths became the first Secretary of State for Wales and set up the Wales Office in Cardiff and London. In the 1970sagain, he was ahead of his timehe favoured a democratically elected national assembly, but wanted Wales to remain an integral part of the UK and to be represented at the highest level in Cabinet by its own Secretary of State. Jim would have been proud to see this Bill, which reflects the growing confidence that people in Wales have in the Assembly Government.
	I look forward to the introduction of the Order-in-Council mechanism, which will enable legislative initiatives by the Assembly Government, within their spheres of competence, to be fast-tracked through our complicated Westminster procedures. The Bill enshrines in law the opportunity for a referendum on further devolution of powers, once there is a two-thirds majority in the Assembly and the approval of this place and the other place. That prepares the way for elected representatives here and in the Assembly to proceed with a referendum on further powers for the Assembly, if they feel that that reflects the mood of the people of Wales.
	It saddens me that some regional AMs have misused their position, and it is precisely because of that misuse that we need to bring in this legislation, which will prohibit candidates from standing both on the regional list and as constituency candidates. Regional AMs have a golden opportunity, without constituency responsibility, to take a much broader perspectivea regional or all-Wales view. Instead, some regional AMs use their time and resources to concentrate on one constituency to the detriment of the rest of their region. For example, one regional AM in a press release today describes herself as a Llanelli-based AM, and is bandying about comparative expenditure figures for Prince Philip hospital, in Llanelli, and for West Wales general hospital, in Carmarthen. She makes no mention of Withybush hospital, in Haverfordwest, or Bronglais hospital, in Aberystwyth, which are also in her region. Any regional AM worth her salt would not quote meaningless past figures out of context, but would look to the future impact of the impending review of NHS services on the whole of her region. It is not surprising that people will interpret that as blatant electioneering.
	Time after time, my constituents are amazed that the candidate who was defeated in the constituency election can be allowed to set herself up in this way. However, I find it incredible that the hon. Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones) says that parties do not have enough quality candidates to field different candidates for constituency and list. What a sad state to be in.
	As for arguments that this reform is partisan, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out that it could have an equally negative effect on Labour Assembly Members. My friend and colleague, Catherine Thomas, Assembly Member for my constituency of Llanelli, has a majority of 21 votes. Under this reform, she will not have the option of standing for both the constituency and the list, unlike her predecessor, who on losing in the 2003 election, got in on the list. Catherine Thomas, like candidates from all parties, has had to make the choice for 2007.
	The hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) is right that even under this legislation regional Members could still choose to focus on one constituency, but they would not have actually lost an election, with the subsequent loss of credibility with the electorate, who often feel very angry about such situations. The Bill will not stop an existing list Member from standing for a constituency, and therefore it is absurd to refer to the change as partisan.
	The Bill recognises the way in which the Assembly is increasingly winning the confidence of the Welsh people and I know that if he were alive today, Jim Griffiths would join me in welcoming the enhanced powers and the more effective systems that will lead to the better delivery of services for the people of Wales.

Si�n James: I, too, wish to add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), and to express my sympathy for the families of Lord Merlyn-Rees and Lord Stratford. I did not have the honour of serving with them in this place, but I have met both of them. On the last occasion on which I spoke to Lord Merlyn-Rees he was very elderly, but very erudite and knowledgeable about the ways of the other place. I learned much from him.
	I welcome the Bill and fully endorse its three main aims of enhancing the legislative powers of the Assembly, ending the confusing corporate status of the Assembly and addressing the issue of dual candidacy. We have heard much about the latter today, but I want to address a positive aspect of the Bill.
	I am a committed devolutionist. My first vote as a young mother was in the 1979 referendum. I was so excited about that vote and so disappointed that we did not achieve devolution for Wales. But we stuck with it and, eventually, the Labour party delivered it. We are the real party of devolution. We can make this a workable Bill and we must take this next logical step on the journey. We are halfway there and we must complete it in the fullness of time. I have no concern about that. We must take things slowly and at a pace people understand.
	The provision for a referendum is important, as is the way in which it is triggered. We must take the doubts and concerns of constituents into consideration. Several hon. Members have claimed today that it is not an issue in their constituencies, but it is in mine. People are confused about what is happening, both at Westminster and in the Assembly. I spend much time explaining my role and that of Val Lloyd, the Assembly Member for Swansea, but then we reach the inevitable questionWell, who are the other lot? Then I become a walking, talking advertisement for the regional list Members, because I have to explain who they are and the region they represent. That is where things go a little fuzzy and confusing. When one tries to explain the regionality of it and the roles and responsibilities of regional list Members, people are confused.

David Davies: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Si�n James: I shall let you interrupt at your will.

David Davies: The hon. Lady is very kind and she knows that I have a great deal of affection for her from our previous campaigns[Hon. Members: Oh!] She mentions the confusion that the voting system causes, and I accept that, but the issue is whether list Members should be able to stand as constituency Members. Does she really claim that the intricacies of the d'Hondt system are a big issue in Swansea?

Si�n James: They are not a huge issue; the big issues are, as we have said, public services and standards, but when we start to debate things in greater depth confusion occurs. I am dreadfully sorry if you have not taken the time

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Si�n James: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady must sit down when I am on my feet, otherwise she will be committing another offence. She should not use the second person when referring to another hon. Member.

Si�n James: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	When I am out and about, I deal with questions such as those I outlined and I hope that all Members do so. We need to convince people that the measure is workable and that it is important for them. Questions are always asked about regionality and I spend much time on the doorstep and at surgeries trying to explain it.
	People also want to know about accountability and responsibility, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) said, we need clarity about regionality. Sometimes, I feel that I must have been in a different country from other Members and that I have been dealing with completely different people. People who ask me questions are tired of hearing negativity on the doorstep; they are tired of people saying this, that and the other. They want us to work in a unified way to deliver things for Wales. They want us to work in partnership, so we need to take logical, forward steps, not backward steps.
	What we do in this place affects many people. We have heard much today about what the Electoral Reform Society is attempting to do, but I can assure the House that it has carried out no specific research into the confusion between regional list Members and constituency Members. Perhaps the society should ask specific questions. Perhaps it should go to constituencies such as Swansea, East and ask people in my constituency.
	I am tired of going to events and falling over regional Members. In Swansea, there are many opportunities to mix and mingle and I constantly fall over regional Assembly Members who introduce themselves as the Member for this area.

Cheryl Gillan: They are.

Si�n James: Indeed, but this area implies the place where they are standing. I wonder how they have the time. They are not so keen to say

Stephen Crabb: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Si�n James: No, I want to finish my speech.
	We need a clear protocol for how people describe themselves, how they introduce themselves and what they represent. I ask only for clarity.

Wayne David: My comments will be brief. I have three essential points, but I begin by pointing out that I have always believed that devolution is about partnershipbetween Cardiff and London and between the National Assembly for Wales and Westminster. That is the essence of the concept of devolution and it is certainly behind the Bill, which I hope will soon become an Act.
	The first of my three points is that we are taking a positive step forward when we talk about an end to the corporate status of the Assembly, and I am glad there is consensus behind that. If we cast our minds back and are honest, we realise that much of the thinking behind the vision of the Assembly in 1996 and 1997 was that it would be representative of inclusive politics in Wales; that all politicians would get together, sink their differences and push forward for a national goal.
	That was wrong. It was a myth and we have learned from it. We realise that if we are to have a proper legislative body, we must have a clearly defined Government accountable to the Assembly as a whole. That is fully recognised by all parties in the House and forms the basis of the Bill.
	We must also recognise that there will be consequences for the organisation of the Assembly. If we are not to have more Assembly MembersI am glad that we are notBack-Bench AMs will have to take on greater responsibility for ensuring proper accountability and scrutiny. That is why, as the Presiding Officer has said, we need a review of the hours worked by the Assembly and there should be greater responsibility on the shoulders of Back Benchers.
	The second point that I want to make relates to the emotive issue of the changes proposed to the electoral system. I want to make it absolutely clear that I see no advantage for the Labour party in the changes proposed by the Government. It is interesting that Opposition Members have made no argument in favour of that assertion whatsoever. If the changes come about, they will enhance the Assembly's credibility and introduce a fundamental moral fairness that simply says that losers cannot be winners as well. It is as simple as that. When we talk to people in the street about electoral systemsif we can engage them in that discussionall those to whom I have spoken accept that basic, fundamental democratic premise. Scholarly work is not needed to analyse that; simply talk to ordinary people and they recognise the inherent fairness in the Government's proposal. We must always listen to the people. That is the essence of democracy.
	The third and final point that I want to make relates to the Assembly's powers. The proposal for Orders in Council is a sensible and pragmatic way forward. It is entirely in line with the partnership principle that I spoke about earlier. If we make that seismic shift towards having legislative powers, it is incumbent on us to say that the people should be consulted in a fully fledged referendum.
	With those three points, I very much hope that the Bill will be endorsed on Second Reading. It will be sensible and constructive legislation. It will take democracy and the Assembly forward, and it will help to create a better United Kingdom.

Dominic Grieve: It has been a pleasure to participate in the debate. I well remember the original Government of Wales Bill, and I spent many hours in the House considering it, as I did with the Scotland Bill, during my first year in Parliament. The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) is right to suggest that it was thought that such legislation would usher in a new, inclusive form of politics. Indeed, the word holistic was bandied about the Chamber so much that I began to think that it was almost a term of abuse. It is worth bearing that in mind, because now that we revisit the matter eight years later, we must be careful not to commit similar mistakes again.
	I agree with the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), who said that we should be careful about getting too bogged down in constitutional dogma and that what people want are better services and more accountability. I accept that argument, but equally, as I am sure he will have noted from the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), there are consequences of devolution, particularly in inequality of service provision, that cannot simply be lightly disregarded on cross-border issues.
	As was highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies), dislike of the Assembly's failings and inefficiencies is a phenomenon in Wales, just as there are those who approve of the way that it has operated. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones) pointed out that there appears to be no consensus on what further form legislative devolution should takesomething that was ultimately acknowledged by many hon. Members on both sides of the House. I certainly suspect that my cousins in north Wales who have farmed in the Clwydian range for a very long time would heartily wish to see the Assembly disappear, but they are as Welsh as any of the Labour Members who have spoken. That happens to be their view.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) pointed out that only 25 per cent. of the electorate voted for the Assembly in the first place. With that in mind, we must approach the question of how the Assembly can be improved. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) made clear at the outset, we want to try to make the Assembly work well. We accept that some provisions in the Bill are long overdue, particularly the separation of the Executive and the legislature, which perhaps reflects the end of inclusivity. Indeed, in so far as the Government wish to put a referendum to the Welsh people about whether they want primary legislative powers for their Assembly, one cannot possibly disagree with asking that question even if one has reservations about the proposals. The problem, however, is that that is not the main part of the Bill, and certainly not the main part of the Bill as it will ultimately affect the majority of people in Wales in the short-term future.
	What the Government plan to do is rather surprising. When we debated the first Government of Wales Bill, one of the arguments put forward was that the rise in the use of statutory instruments as a form of governance in this country meant that there was a growing disconnection between Parliament and those being governed, and that one of the ways of dealing with that problem in the Welsh context was to enable the Assembly to be the implementers of statutory instruments. Of course, it was to be denied primary legislation. However, the Government's proposals in this Bill are a Minister's dream. They will take the remaining areas of primary legislation and convert them into a form of statutory instrument over which the House effectively abdicates all responsibility.
	There is a purpose behind primary legislation, which we do not do very well in the House any more. That is one of the reasons why we have the debates about devolution. If we were not so absurdly guillotined when we are in Committeethe point applies not just to this Bill, but to all the legislation that we considerthe process of debate would enable proper scrutiny to take place. Over the past eight years, we have seen time and again the Government's desire to cut that scrutiny, but now they suddenly come along and say that it does not matter because they are going to cut it down even further and hand it over by diktat of the Secretary of State, with massive reserve powers for the Executive, to the Welsh Assembly, which will be a substitute for the scrutiny that this House will not provide.
	I say to the Secretary of State that that is a serious constitutional innovation and change. If that is the way that the Government wish to proceed, and if they believe that it is the futurethe approach could be applied not just to the Welsh Assembly, but to regional bodies, the London assembly or any other form of governmentthis must be an issue on which the public are consulted first. There are serious implications and the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) highlighted the problems that can flow from devolution, in terms both of the uncoupling of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom and of the quality of government that people receive.

Peter Hain: What precise question would the hon. Gentleman ask people in the referendum?

Dominic Grieve: If the question is, do people wish to be governed by Order in Council moderated in its detail by the Welsh Assembly, that is a matter[Interruption.] That is the question, and if the question cannot be put, perhaps that is a good reason for not embarking on the project in the first place. The complexity of the Government's proposals is one of the reasons why I find them objectionable and why I am anxious about them. The proposals will deprive the House of its ability to carry out its function of scrutiny of primary legislation, but it does not hand that function lock, stock and barrel over to the Welsh Assembly. It hands it over to a hybrid system in which the key linchpin is the Secretary of State. To that extent, the other model, which is to give primary legislative power to the Welsh Assembly, is certainly constitutionally much neater, but it runs the risk of being rejected.
	I am afraid that I have very little doubt, as was pointed out eloquently by some Members who participated in the debate, that the reason that the Government have not embarked on the referendum is that they do not think that they will carry the Welsh electorate with them. The success of devolution has not been sufficient to justify it. We cannot support the most important part of the Bill, and that explains why we must table a reasoned amendment. As it is the central part of the Bill, how can we possibly not register our displeasure at an early stage about the way in which the Government have chosen to proceed?
	There are all sorts of unanswered questions about the procedure. The Government say that there will be pre-legislative scrutiny, but they completely gloss over what will be subjected to such scrutiny. It will be only Orders in Council. Assembly measures cannot be subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny because they will not exist. The Government are thus misleading the public and some of their Back Benchers about what will happen.
	The capacity of the House to have any real input into the detail of legislation will be affected. I always remember Tam Dalyell's comment that the devil lies in the detail, which he rightly said repeatedly in the devolution debates of the late 1990s, and our inability to examine the detail is the absolute Achilles heel of the way in which we legislate in this country. Even if the Assembly is well meaning and works hard, I do not think that it is an adequate substitute for what we do in the House. If it were to be such a substitute, the proper way of achieving that would be to transfer primary legislative functions to the Welsh Assembly. If the people of Wales do not want that, the Secretary of State should accept that they perhaps want to work within the existing system, not along the lines that the Government propose.
	I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) said that the Bill was a sleight of hand. It is in fact a deception because it proposes a major constitutional change, but denies a referendum to the Welsh people through which they can express their view on it. On those grounds alone, we would be entitled to vote against the Bill on Second Reading, but because we wished to support certain aspects of it, the proper course of action was to table a reasoned amendment. I encourage hon. Members on both sides of the House to give serious consideration to supporting it.
	On the electoral system, we are in danger of embarking on a theatre of the absurd. I am a believer in first past the post. I did not like it when we introduced proportional representation systems, and I still do not like them. However, if we are going to have them, we have jolly well got to accept the consequences of having them and try to ensure, as a Parliament, a degree of consistency in respect of them.
	The exceptional measures that the Government have decided to apply only to Walesnot to Scotland or the London assemblydo not stand up to close scrutiny. Elected Members of an Assembly or Parliament are members of a body corporate. If we decide to give people alternative ways of getting in there, we have to live with the consequences. The purpose of getting into Parliament or an Assembly is to participate in the decision-making process. Parties exist because they wish to promote individuals who they think can participate in that process and make a contribution. Fettering that discretion because the political classes in Wales do not like the fact that losers get in by an alternative way that they themselves enacted in legislation eight years ago is not an adequate response. If the House wishes to devise another system, I am only too happy to co-operate with the Secretary of State or the right hon. Member for Torfaen to achieve that. However, I am not prepared to see tinkering with a system that has been justified and explained to the House on numerous occasions after being brought in, but has suddenly ceased to be flavour of the month.

Jim Devine: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dominic Grieve: I will not give way because I wish to give the Minister the opportunity to make his winding-up speech and we are having short wind-ups anyway.
	I thank hon. Members who expressed words of greeting to my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham as she takes over her task as shadow Welsh Secretary. I look forward to the debates in the Committee of the whole House when we will have the opportunity to consider the detail of the Bill. However, the Bill is sadly wanting. I am afraid that it is a typical piece of new Labour tinkering with constitutional propriety. It is a dishonest piece of legislation because it says that it does something, yet in fact does something rather different and far more fundamental to the constitution of this country.

Nick Ainger: I, too, welcome the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) to her new position. I also want to pass on my condolences to the families of Merlyn Rees and Tony Banks.
	It has been a long and interesting debate, to which I believe I am the 27th contributor. We have learned something from the position of the Tory party: it is even more divided than it was on devolution. The comments made by the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) do not seem to be in tune with those of his new leader. As there have been so many contributions, I am sure that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not address every one that has been made. Some big issues have been raised and I will address those.

David Davies: Will the Minister give way?

Nick Ainger: No, I am sorry. Normally I would be very generous, but I have 10 minutes to wind up and 26 contributions to deal with.
	We have had a great deal of discussion and debate about the Orders in Council and the Assembly measures. The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham mentioned the issue, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), the hon. Members for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) and for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy). I will not go on with the list, but many Members made reference to the Orders in Council.
	According to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), the issue seems to be whether the Order in Council process will allow proper scrutiny of legislation. It might be worth while explaining how the system is proposed to work and then perhaps hon. Members will be reassured. An Order in Council would start with a debate in the Assembly, in which the policy arguments would be discussed. The Assembly Government would then request the Secretary of State to lay an order. It would be a preliminary draft Order in Council, alongside which would be an explanatory memorandum that would detail the policy, the practical effect and the legislative impact of the order.
	It would be for the House to decide how to undertake the pre-legislative scrutiny. We have the Welsh Affairs Committee, which has scrutinised many all-Wales pieces of legislation and done an excellent job. We also have the facility, if needed and if the House felt it was required, to use

Cheryl Gillan: At the pre-legislative scrutiny stage, will the draft Assembly measure be attached?

Nick Ainger: Yes, the preliminary draft measure, along with its explanatory memorandum, will be attached. It will therefore, going through its pre-legislative scrutiny, be amendable. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen expressed concern that it could not be amended. In its preliminary draft form, when it was going through the pre-legislative scrutiny process, it could be amended. Once the process has been completed, it would go back to the Assembly for the wording of the order to be confirmed. It would come before my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who would lay the Order in Council. We would then have an hour and a half debate on the Floor of the House, if required. The usual channels would decide how it would work.
	The important thing, which the Conservative party cannot accept, is that the detail of the legislation that would be proposed and to which permission would be given by this House would be scrutinised by the Assembly. We are getting rather a spurious argument. The Tories have not changed that much and they do not want further powers devolved down to the Assembly for it to scrutinise its own legislation.
	There is no fundamental change to the devolution settlement. Parliament remains in pole position. As many hon. Members will know, we are already giving framework powers to the National Assembly for Wales. For example, in relation to the NHS Redress Bill the Assembly will be given framework powers to develop its own scheme. Under that Bill, the Assembly will decide its own regulations on a complete smoking ban in Wales. Those processes are ongoing. Our aim in the Orders in Council process is to overcome the parliamentary legislative logjam and to fast-track Welsh legislation. It is certainly not a back-door mechanism; it is open and transparent, unlike the present procedures. The Assembly may want a piece of legislation to be passed, but it is up the Secretary of State and various Committees in this place and in government to decide whether it becomes part of our legislative programme.
	Let me assure my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West, who is no longer in his place, that there was widespread consultation on the White Paper and that the Parliament Act cannot be used in relation to Orders in Council. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) compared the process in the Bill with the Northern Ireland process, but, as I am sure he now accepts after my explanation, they are not alike. The detail of the Orders in Council under the Bill will be scrutinised by the Assembly.
	Another issue that exercised hon. Members on both sides of the House is that of dual candidacy. The hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) and other hon. Members quoted the Welsh Affairs Committee report and the evidence given to that Committee, but having read that report I have to say, in all humility, that I saw no evidence that the Labour party is being partisan; what I saw was opinions expressed by academics and others. In fact, evidence presented by other academics argued strongly that dual candidacy was a real issue.

David Davies: Will the Minister give way?

Nick Ainger: No. I have told the hon. Gentleman that I will not give way.
	The Arbuthnott inquiry in Scotland is also highlighting problems relating to dual candidacy. The point eloquently made by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) is that people do not see how losers becoming winners can be justified. That is the issue that we are attempting to address. Opposition Members claim that our proposals are partisan. In fact, because there will be no parachute or life raft, the people who are likely to lose out are not Opposition AMs, but Labour AMs. They are the ones who face losing their seats. It is incredible to claim that the measure is partisan.
	Finally on that point, let me tell the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy that New Brunswick is still considering whether to ban dual candidacy.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen discussed the voting system and the number of Assembly Members. I am aware of no demand for the number of AMs to be increased. He and my hon. Friends the Members for Ynys Mn (Albert Owen) and for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) also talked about the system of proportional representation. If we are being accused of gerrymandering through our provisions on dual candidacy, I hate think what the reaction would be if we proposed an end to the additional member system. If we created a wholly proportional system, the Labour party would be in power permanently in the Assembly.
	Labour is the party of devolution. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out, it was Labour that first created the Cabinet post of Secretary of State for Wales, Labour that extended the responsibilities of the Welsh Office and Labour that gave the people of Wales the chance to control their own affairs. I urge the House to reject the Conservative reasoned amendment and I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made:
	The House divided: Ayes 161, Noes 341.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Main Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 62 (Amendment on second or third reading), and agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read a Second time.

GOVERNMENT OF WALES BILL (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A (6) (Programme motions),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Government of Wales Bill:
	Committal
	1. The Bill shall be committed to a Committee of the whole House.
	Proceedings in Committee
	2. Proceedings in Committee of the whole House shall be completed in three days.
	3. The proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 92 and 93, Schedule 5, Clauses 94 to 102, Schedule 6, Clauses 103 to 107, Schedule 7, Clauses 108 to 115, Clauses 1 and 2, Schedule 1, Clauses 3 to 27, Schedule 2, Clauses 28 to 58, Schedule 3, Clauses 59 to 87, Schedule 4, Clauses 88 to 91, Clauses 116 to 144, Schedule 8, Clauses 145 to 148, Schedule 9, Clauses 149 to 159, Schedule 10, Clauses 160 and 161, Schedule 11, Clause 162, Schedule 12, Clauses 163 to 165, new Clauses, new Schedules, remaining proceedings on the Bill.
	4. The proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on the third day.
	5. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to the proceedings on the Bill in Committee of the whole House.
	Consideration and Third Reading
	6. Proceedings on consideration and Third Reading shall be completed in two days
	7. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the second day.
	8. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
	9. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
	Other proceedings
	10. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed. [Mr. Watson.]
	Question agreed to.

GOVERNMENT OF WALES BILL [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with bills),
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Government of Wales Bill, it is expedient to authorise
	(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of
	(a)   expenditure incurred by a Minister of the Crown or government department by virtue of the Act, and
	(b)   any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money provided by Parliament,
	(2) the payment out of the National Loans Fund of any sums required by the Secretary of State for making loans under the Act, and
	(3) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund and the National Loans Fund.[Mr. Watson.]
	Question agreed to.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Northern Ireland

That the draft Industrial and Provident Societies (Northern Ireland) Order 2005, which was laid before this House on 14th November, be approved.[Mr. Watson.]
	Question agreed to.
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Proceeds of Crime

That the draft Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and Money Laundering Regulations 2003 (Amendment) Order 2005, which was laid before this House on 22nd November,
	be approved.[Mr. Watson.]
	Question agreed to.
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Constitutional Law

That the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Modifications of Schedule 5) Order 2006, which was laid before this House on 29th November, be approved.[Mr. Watson.]
	Question agreed to.

PETITION
	  
	Asbestos

Bill Etherington: After first wishing you a happy new year, Mr. Speaker, I would like to seek your indulgence because I find myself in a very unusual position. I have brought forward this petition on behalf of my constituent, Mr. Ron McQuillan. I do not agree with the petition, but I would not in any way wish to prevent him from having his rights in this House, and in fairness I have brought it forward. It is right that I say that in fairness to Mr. McQuillan and myself.

Mr. Speaker: PetitionMr. Etherington.

Bill Etherington: I cannot really say any more, Mr. Speaker. I have never come across a situation where an MP has brought a petition that he does not agree with.

Mr. Speaker: Let me say to the hon. Gentleman that an hon. Member does not have to agree with the spirit or intention of the petition, but he is required to explain to the House what it is about. I am getting curiouser and curiouser.

Bill Etherington: It is not about me, Mr. Speakerthat is one thing that is for certain.
	The petitioner, Mr. McQuillan, has had a long-running dispute with just about everyone in society about asbestos in his house. He has managed to get a few people to support him, and that is the basis of his petition.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. Gentleman have the petition?

Bill Etherington: It is in the Table Office.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman should have the petition in his possession. For the sake of good order, perhaps tomorrow he can bring the petition with him and present it to the House. He is presenting a petition on behalf of a constituent, so if that is done tomorrow everything will be in good order and according to the rules of our House.

SCHOOL EDUCATION STANDARDS (PLYMOUTH)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Watson.]

Linda Gilroy: Tonight I want to tell the story of one city, Plymouth, and the great strides that we have taken to raise standards in schools. I want to set out how much we value the investment that has underpinned that and how we want to ensure that the White Paper and the education Bill that flows from it allow us to build on what is, by anybody's measure, a success.
	Making the most of that investment in Plymouth has been an army of peoplethe teachers and support staff, the governors who have seen their responsibilities increase substantially over the period, principals and head teachers in primary and secondary schools across the city, and students and their parents. As Professor Charles Desforges has shown, involved parents can add more than anyoneincluding the most able teachersto the children's ability to achieve the standards that we know they are able to achieve.
	I want to acknowledge the investment in early-years learning through one of the first early excellence centresthe Nomony centre in my constituencyas well as five Sure Start Schemes and children's centres that are developing from those. All told, 17 are now established in Plymouth. The very welcome recent 3.5 million investment in such programmes will ensure that even more children are able to take those important first steps at primary school with confidence and good-quality parental support.
	To create the physical surroundings fit for a 21st-century learning environment, there has been substantial investment in school buildings since 1997one of the most visible signs of investment in public services is the scaffolding outside almost every school in the city since 1997and now we are set to see a further wave of investment through private finance initiative credits, although not as much as we think we merit from our track record or the significant challenges we face in the city. The number of teachers has increased. There are substantially more classroom assistants, who now have a career path where they want it, and a status that recognises their important role in making our classrooms places of achievement for students.
	Our local education authority, under the able leadership of Bronwen Lacey, who is now director of children's services, and council portfolio holders Camp and Purnell, has merited good ratings by Ofsted and the Audit Commission since Plymouth became a unitary authority in 1998. Strengths reported in the recent audit include good early-years' provision, effective monitoring and challenging for schools causing concern, improving standards of English in primary schools, and attaining higher standards at key stages 3 and 5 than other authorities. Specific areas of improvement include attainment in science and a reduction in levels of unauthorised absence in primary schools, as well as progress made by lower-attaining pupils.
	I recognise that much of what I am about to say depends on having a local authority that makes the most of the tools and the investment provided by the Government. Plymouth was the first city in the country to have specialist college status for all its secondary schools, and that has provided a strong focus for school improvement and for driving up standards. Leadership, quality teaching and a strong emphasis on collaboration to offer choice and raise standards have been the key drivers.
	In Plymouth, a range of federated schools offer choice and do so with models of personalised learning that appear already to meet many if not most of the aspirations of chapter 4 of the White Paper. The one that I know best is the Lipson, Estover, Plymouth high school for girls model. Two schools with specialist art college status and a girls' grammar school co-operate to offer a sixth-form programme with a choice of 100 courses and a virtual sixth form of some 600 students. Within the same federation, the 14-to-19 programme offers a well developed system of personalised learning supported by the much-valued investment in IT resources which, it seems hard to remember, barely existed in 1997.
	Choice in our education community in Plymouth has a much wider meaning than simply the choice of school made by parents and by students at the age of 11. Drawing on a catchment area, which 10 years ago included the poorest ward in England, school achievements at Lipson college have been significantly above the national average for value added from key stages 2 to 4. Indeed, if we look at key stage 3, we see that between 2001 and 2005, English standards have risen by 14 per cent. as against a national fall of 1 per cent., and that maths standards have risen by 14 per cent. as against a national upward trend of 8 per cent.
	The work in that federation and others in Plymouth draws on a long experience of such collaborative work. The Tamar Valley consortium, which was established in 1988, was a case study in the 2002 Green Paper 1419: Extending Opportunities, Raising Standards. Labour's investment in our education action zone, the excellence cluster and learning improvement grants have built on that, and there is now some success in meeting the needs of young people who are not in employment, education or training.
	The White Paper makes many proposals that continue reform in line with the intellectual and financial investment that our Government have made to establish and secure principles of discipline, to recognise the importance of a strong learning environment, to entrench first-rate and well supported leadership, to enhance and support the role of parents, and to   acknowledge the role of personalised learning, but in our education community in Plymouth there are realand I believe understandableworries about the reliance in the White Paper on principles that could be at odds with building on that experience.
	The White Paper appears to see the principal impetus to drive up standards coming from the expansion of popular schools and the contraction and closure of unpopular schoolsfrom an admissions policy associated with that which many fear will become increasingly competitive. Whatever restraints are placed on it, people fear that the presumption that popular schools should be allowed to expand will inevitably drive competition. The assumption that parent power is ready and waiting to support the process is also doubted in every case.
	I would like to describe what some people fear that could mean in Plymouth, especially given that we have the fastest-falling school rolls in the country. There is no doubt that some schools and pupils would benefit if, let us say, school A in the leafy suburbs, with good and improving achievements to its name and excellent parental engagement to support it, were allowed to expand. There would, however, be various opportunity costs to school B, an inner-city school in my constituency, and to the wider education facilities available to young people in Plymouth.
	School A is given permission to expand. More pupils from the inner city will be admitted to school A. The investment used to expand the school will not be available to develop school B, to build on the personalised learning and to develop further work to drive up standards. Although it may take a bit longer, the improvements in standards in school B will almost certainly be more sustainable. In the interim, students and parents who opt for school A will no longer play a part in the life of school B. Its diverse admissions base will be damaged and by, say, 200809 the drain on the school financially, socially and intellectually will be such that the achievements it has fought so hard to establish will start to be reversed.
	Standards in school B fall. The local authority will help it to fire-fight that, rather than continuing the virtuous circle of development and higher standards that has been well established. One opportunity cost may be that the local authority is doing that rather than helping school B and schools like it through the welcome roles given to it under the Children Act 1989, and the equally welcome roles envisaged in the Green Paper Youth Matters. Another opportunity cost may arise from the energy that the local authority has to give to respond to strong schools applying for trust status, or to expand, when the best and most sustainable results for achievement may come from investing the same energy in the areas of the city that do not have the capacity to be proactive in the same way or to the same degree.
	Hon. Members can imagine the additional frustration when, instead of 98 per cent. of parents' being granted their first choice as is the case now, by 2010 that figure may fall to only 85 per cent., and the number of those not being granted their first choice may rise and seem likely to continue to rise. I know that those are not intended consequences of the White Paper, but they are possible outcomes. I look to the Minister to tell me how the legislation to which the White Paper gives rise will prevent them.
	As my colleagues who are co-signatories to the document Shaping the Education Billreaching for consensus say,
	We recognise that it will take further radical reform to make step changes in progress towards these goals . . . there must be a refusal to tolerate coasting, mediocre or failing delivery of education . . . the victims of such failure are disproportionately the very young people that, despite the successes of our reforms, are still too often left behind by the system.

Alison Seabeck: I have listened with great interest to my hon. Friend's comments, including her description of the strength of our education service in Plymouth. I heartily support what she is saying, and agree that the Government's policies have made a significant difference to the standard of education provision in Plymouth. I want to use two schools as examples to reinforce some of her points

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. It sounds as though the hon. Lady is about to embark on a speech, albeit a short one. She must intervene briefly, as in a normal debate, or, if she has the permission of the initiator of the Adjournment debate and the Minister, she may make a small contribution when the initiator of the debate has finished, if the initiator is happy with that. That would be the more sensible way in which to proceed, if everyone is happy with it. It depends on the initiator of the debate.

Linda Gilroy: I know how assiduously my hon. Friend has been working with her schools to ensure that standards in Devonport are driven up, as they are in the rest of Plymouth. In Plymouth we have already gone a long way towards creating a learning community with the tools and investment that the Government have provided. I think we accept that, even with the use of all those tools, our improvements in pupil attainment have reached a plateau, and like the Government, we want to find a new impetus. We do not want things to stay the same. We believe that that new impetus is provided by the Children Act and the Youth Matters Green Paper. Through extended schools and children's centres, Plymouth can deliver the five outcomes for children and young people, with leadership across the system and with everyone owning the outcomes for all our children.
	Many people who share our passion for education believe that a school-centric approach has limitations, and that the further step change in the driving up of standards that we all want will result from our continuing to build the framework that involves everyone in the city's agenda for the ongoing battle to tackle poverty and improve children's health, housing and leisure, and the economic welfare of their families. An absolutely essential part of raising standards for all is ensuring that young people have the skills to read and write and that no future generation of adults is handicapped by the scandalous legacy that we inherited in 1997 of one in five adults not having functional basic skills.
	Since 1997, the number of Plymouth 11-year-olds going on to secondary school with their basic number and reading skills at the expected level has gone up from 62 to 75 per cent. in English and from 57 to 77 per cent. in maths. If 65 per cent. of pupils aged 11 who still do not attain the expected level in English and 55 per cent. of those not attaining the expected level in maths are identified as having special educational needs and if a substantial proportion of them, and of the rest of the one in four 11-year-olds not achieving those standards come from poor backgrounds, surely a strong focus on this in primary and secondary schools, rather than expanding schools, will make the step change we all want.
	We face significant challenges; mainly dramatically falling school rolls and a need to spend on our school buildings after decades of neglect. We do not want to be distracted or to be less brave than we might be. We are at our best when recognising that together we can do more than we can alone. We worry that the White Paper initiatives on admissions and trust status will mean we are less, rather than more, likely to deal strategically and energetically with these issues.
	We worry that the proposed development of a body of self-regulating schools will not have a system of accountability that is guaranteed to help us do this most effectively; to take into account the wider interests of the education provision in the city and to have measures to ensure that the interests of all pupils are protected and advanced. We worry that the checks and balances that the Minister and her colleagues believe may make this accountable will have opportunity costs that detract from our overall ability to raise standards rather than add value to it.
	Other things worry us. What is there to prevent schools from deliberately applying for trust status to avoid closure or amalgamation proposals by the local authority? Is it possible that we might spend our time and energy dealing with schools adjudicator and commissioner decisions rather than getting on with reorganising school place planning to ensure schools are available to complement our very significant regeneration activity and shifting populations? Is it possible that the local authority would have to fund the borrowing requirement for school improvements for schools they do not own?
	Clarity on these points and, particularly, assurances that the strategic roles of the local authority will be fully and properly recognised in the Education Bill need to be given to cities such as Plymouth.
	Finally, eight years ago, the legacy that I inherited from my Conservative predecessor included the poorest ward in England. I for one will take no lessons from the Tories about education or about running an economy in a way that can pay for the investment that has been key to driving up standards. They may be talking warm words about the need for good education for all, but as well as talking the talk, they have to walk the walk.
	Nothing the Conservatives are saying in this debate leads me to believe that they genuinely understand how to bring about the best education for every child in every school and every community. For that, one needs values and principles that they have not even begun to develop. From where I stand, they are as far away from their clause 4 moment as they were eight years ago.
	In the debate between my hon. Friends and I, we share clearly stated underpinning principles:
	By the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few. Where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe. And where we live together, freely, in the spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.
	Those principles are more evident in what we have done in education than in any other part of our reform of public services. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how what flows from the White Paper will build on that.

Alison Seabeck: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Are the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) and the Minister happy for the hon. Lady to make a brief contribution?

Alison Seabeck: A brief one.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is important that it is brief because it is taking time out of the Minister's response.

Alison Seabeck: I want to refer briefly to two schools. Widey Court primary school has 600 pupils, a third of whom are working in temporary huts. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Plymouth's private finance initiative bid, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) referred, was not as significant as we had hoped. Moreover, the local council is not in a position to provide the finance necessary to get the children out of those temporary huts. I wrote to the Minister about this school at the end of last year, so she is aware of the problem.
	The second school that I want to mention is Estover community college, an arts college of the highest standard in the top 5 per cent. of the most improving schools in the country. Indeed, a wonderful celebration of its talents and skills took place last Friday. It is concerned that it is not considered popular because it is not in a popular area. In the light of the expanding schools programme set out in the White Paper, it is worried that it will suffer as parents moveas they undoubtedly doto the east of Plymouth, where the leafy suburbs that my hon. Friend touched on are located. I would welcome some clarification from the Minister as to how the White Paper addresses the concerns of schools such as Estover.

Jacqui Smith: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) on securing this debate. I thank her for raising issues vital to her constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck), but which are also of wider relevance in the world of education.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton set the debate in its local context and I agree that we see a generally improving picture in the city of Plymouth. The authority has made good recent progress and I echo her tribute to the Plymouth heads, teachers and support staff who have worked so hard to secure that progress. I agree that those improvements can also be attributed to the leadership and strategic vision of leading members of staff, and to the director of children's services, Bronwen Lacey, and her team.
	Another important factor in Plymouth's recent success, which my hon. Friend identified, is good partnership working across schools. Such partnerships are fostered by central Government programmes that are providing substantial new resources and investment for the most hard-pressed schools, but also by key collaborations. In both the primary and secondary sectors, most of the trends in Plymouth are at least satisfactory and sometimes good, but my hon. Friend posed the important question: how can we make school standards in an authority such as Plymouth really take off? According to most measures of school performance, the authority is just below the national benchmark, although it is closing the gap. I know that she has a vision that Plymouth can become an excellent modern European city. She knows that, to make that vision a reality, Plymouth must also lead the way with first-rate education and world-class standards. Both my hon. Friends and the local council aspire to that. It is my aspiration, too, and it links directly to the Government's proposals in the schools White Paper.
	Both my hon. Friends are worried that the proposals might prove counter-productive in terms of helping the authority to raise standards. I want to reassure them that, far from being marginalised, the role of authorities such as Plymouth will increase. They will be at the forefront of our drive to generate the step change in standards that we all want.
	Our proposals on tailored, or personalised, learning show that we are providing substantial resources for expert teaching materials, and guidance and training to widen access to small group and one-to-one tuition in English and maths for schools with the most underperforming pupils. We will provide training, so that each school has at least one lead professional to help provide tailored lessons, coupled with substantial additional support from the national strategies consultants. These policies will not promote a two-tier system; quite the reverse.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton rightly referred to the links between learning and achievement and wider social and family challenges. The changes that we are proposing for schools, including trust schools, fit absolutely with the system-wide changes being introduced as a result of Every Child Matters. They are completely compatible with policies to aid the most disadvantaged children. For example, we expect all schools, including trust schools, to provide access to extended services. Again, these are policies that will benefit disadvantaged groups.
	We want to make every school a good school and to expand the number of good places available to parents. That is the policy at the heart of the White Paper. Let me explain why my hon. Friend's fears, which she illustrated through the hypothetical examples of school A and school B, are not well founded. First, let us consider admissions. I appreciate her concern about a competitive admissions arrangement, as she described it, especially in an area with selective schools, but I can assure her that no school will be allowed to introduce selection, and that no selective school will be able to expand. Trust schools will work under exactly the same regime on admissions as all other schools. That means working within the law that outlaws selection by ability and the admissions code. Local authorities will continue to be able to refer objections to the schools adjudicator for legally binding determination, and they will continue to co-ordinate the admissions application process for parents to all maintained schools, and academies.
	Moreover, in future, we intend to make local authorities the key decision maker about the overall pattern of provision in an area, by abolishing the school organisation committee, so that it will be for local authorities to make the decision on whether a popular school should be able to expand. That decision should be made in the interests of pupils and parents, not to protect institutions. While it is right that the local authority takes account of the impact on neighbouring schools, that should not be the sole factor in reaching a decision. If a large group of parents proposes a new school to satisfy an unmet need, the local authority will, rightly, be under a duty to respond.
	The White Paper offers a new, exciting opportunity for a different sort of expansion. To go back to my hon. Friend's example, there is no reason why school A should not become a trust school. Experience shows that strong schools with dynamic and committed leaders are often very willing to help weaker schools improve. The heads and governors of such schools recognise that they should use their expertise and good practice for the benefit of the entire local community. Such heads are often looking for new challenges and, moreover, recognise that the arrangements very often also strengthen the stronger school, for example by developing middle leaders and attracting new and able staff. Even in less well performing schools, there are many lessons to be learned from collaboration.
	Why not have a federation between school A and school B, designed to strengthen both schools, with expertise being shared under a common school ethos and a shared trust, dedicated to excellence? Perhaps they can bring in further drive and expertise from community organisations, higher education or a local employer. I know that my hon. Friend is ambitious to develop the science expertise in Plymouth and perhaps a link could be made in that direction.
	There will not be the same solution everywhere, but there could be real opportunities to support even more powerful and permanent collaborations through the trust model. Another crucial point is the overarching role of the authority in driving up standards. To take my hon. Friend's example a little further, if school B were reluctant to set a strategy for improvement, or unreasonable in rejecting collaborative opportunities, there would in future be increased powers for authorities to take necessary action. That is another central theme to the White Paperthe role of authorities in raising standards. They must be ready with decisive plans for radical action when schools go into special measures or get a notice to improve. However, I am pleased to note that Plymouth has a good recent record of supporting schools that have failed Ofsted inspections and I hope that that will continue and be strengthened by the proposals in the White Paper.
	I wish now to deal with the very specific questions my hon. Friend asked. First, on schools using trust status to avoid closure or amalgamation, I have already stated that, with the abolition of the school organisation committees, it is authorities that will take the statutory decisions. Authorities will have new duties to promote choice, diversity and fair access and to be responsive to parental representations. We expect them to take those duties seriously, and one of the roles of the schools commissioner will be to see that they do so. We are aware that good authorities already keep provision in their area under review and are responsive to the views of parents, but there is a real opportunity for authorities to get out, to ask parents who have not always had a voice what they want to see in local schools and to reflect that in their important strategic planning role.
	On the third point, about funding a borrowing requirement, I can confirm that local authorities will remain responsible for funding the maintenance of a foundation or trust school's buildings, and that the capital arrangements will largely operate as now. All schools will receive devolved formula capital and be able to apply to their local authority for larger projects. I can assure my hon. Friends that trust schools will remain a full part of capital spending planning. They will remain part of the building schools for the future scheme, which will focus on the needs of schools and their pupils, not the type of school. Trust schools will not be able to tear up a PFI contract into which the local authority has entered.
	I understand the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck) about the level of PFI credits made available to Plymouth. They have to be seen in the context of historically high levels of capital spending, but I hope to be able to respond to her letter and concerns in full.
	To conclude, I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton for bringing this important debate to the House. She has rightly raised issues of the highest importance to her constituents and challenged us to outline how the next stage of reform will increase standards for them and play to the strengths both of schools in her constituency and of her local authority.
	Everything about the White Paper is about improving standards. Turning around failing schools quicker: that is about improving standards. More one-to-one and small group tuition: that is about improving standards. More involvement of parents in their child's education: that is about improving standards. Stronger rights for teachers to be clear about their ability to discipline: that is about providing the basis to improve standards. Making greater use of the energy and dynamism in our communitieswhich my hon. Friend has identified inPlymouththrough trust schools: that is an opportunity to improve standards.
	There is not a blueprint for every area of the country, but I believe that in sharing the values that my hon. Friend has identified, the White Paper provides important opportunities.
	The motion having been made after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
	Adjourned accordingly at eight minutes to Eleven o'clock.